Chemical Affinities. 65 



constituent parts are prone to arrange themselves in layers 

 of special materials. 



The* late mound of the Vauxhall Gardens, when cut 

 through some 60 or 70 years after its formation, showed 

 this peculiarity very distinctly clay, sand, pebbles, and 

 small fragments of pottery ranging themselves in consecu- 

 tive and singular order. Even a heap of stable sweepings, 

 forming the midden, after two or three years, arranges itself 

 into a manure of alternating layers of dark chocolate and 

 green strata. 



This form of attraction is that most commonly found 

 in Nature, at least in the inorganic world, and widely 

 contrasts with what is usually understood by chemical 

 affinities, which will be here named eclectic attraction 



This eclectic attraction is very singular in its modes of 

 manifestation; to bring it about perfectly it requires the 

 component parts of which any combinations may be formed 

 to be brought into a fluid state, either as solutions or gases ; 

 as tartaric acid and bicarbonate of soda, if kept compara- 

 tively dry, change very slowly indeed into the neutral salt 

 Tartrate of soda, but dissolve each in water, and the action 

 is almost instantaneous. But if a large mass, say one 

 million of tons, were buried in the earth and subjected to 

 great pressure, it is very doubtful if, after a hundred years, 

 the salt would not be reduced to some more simple elements ; 

 just as the neutral salt sulphate of iron would probably 

 revert to some sulphuret. Fluidity, and given ranges of 

 temperature appear essential for the due manifestations of 

 eclectic attraction. As living bodies are a compound of the 

 similarity attraction, and the eclectic, it is deserving of 

 notice that the primary part of conversion of raw material 

 to be changed into animal tissue passes through a series of 

 processes, as moistening, crushing, churning, and then suspen- 



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