CAUSE OF CHEMICAL ATTRACTION. 21 1 



Every chemist knows, that he cannot carry 

 on his distillations, separations, and recombi- 

 nations without the agency of heat. But re- 

 garding this as an incidental circumstance, he 

 resorts to the agency of electricity for a solution 

 of the problem, without inquiring into the source 

 of this mysterious power, or whether it could 

 have any existence independent of the igneous 

 principle. 



The controlling agency of caloric in the phe- 

 nomena of chemistry, may be traced in all the 

 decompositions and recombinations that are per- 

 petually going on throughout nature. The truth 

 of this proposition is attested by the vast amount 

 of chemical action within the torrid zone, and 

 within the temperate latitudes during summer ; 

 while in the regions of perpetual congelation 

 there is no chemical transformation. It is well 

 known, that animal and vegetable matter may 

 be preserved without alteration for unlimited 

 periods of time, in conservatories of ice or snow.* 



* Nothing could more clearly illustrate this fact, than the 

 account of a huge elephant (or mammoth,) discovered in the 

 midst of a large mass of ice on the shore of the frozen ocean, 

 near the mouth of the river Lena in Siberia ; where it must have 

 remained for thousands of years, as it belonged to an extinct 

 species. When first discovered, in 1799, by a Tonguiese fisher- 

 man, the carcass was perfectly fresh and entire, parts of which 

 were given by the neighbouring Jackouts to their dogs ; while 

 the remainder was devoured by wild beasts, after its disengage- 

 ment from the ice, when its skin, bones, and teeth were removed 



