16 



ble. Regarding the same substance in its different polymeric 

 states, due to different degrees of condensation, as represent- 

 ing so many different chemical and mineral species, he, like 

 other chemists, was driven to construct chemical formulas 

 much more complex than those which satisfied the require- 

 ments of the Daltonian atomic theory as it had been previ- 

 ously understood ; for, once volume is admitted to be as 

 discriminating an element in chemical change as weight and 

 condensation are in the expression of volumetric change, the 

 enormous volumetric difference between gaseous and solid 

 states of the same substance, or rather between a gaseous 

 chemical species ami a solid mineral species, involves for its 

 expression the use of numbers which dwarf those assigned 

 till recently to even organic compounds. In his New Basis 

 of Chemistry (second edition), Hunt calculates the equivalent 

 weight of water to be 21,400.3 ; and to the last he continued 

 wrestling with the problem of the actual coefficient of con- 

 densation of each mineral and chemical species ; liquid water 

 at the point of condensation at standard pressure being taken 

 as unity (1 : 21,400). This New Basis of Chemistry was to 

 Hunt no longer theory, but fact. He had believed for manv 

 years that the solid and liquid mineral species known to us 

 are formed by processes of intrinsic condensation, or so-called 

 polymerization, from simpler chemical species. He knew, 

 with every chemist, that the determination of the coefficient 

 of condensation is a problem of the highest moment, a prob- 

 lem which had been neglected in the belief that it did not 

 admit of solution. When, therefore, in 1886, he reached what 

 he regarded as a solution of this unsoluble problem, and 

 propounded the theorem that ' the volume, not only of gases 

 and vapors, but of all species, whether gaseous, liquid, or 

 solid, is constant, and that the integral weight varies directly 

 as the density,' he rejoiced in the conviction that he had 

 realized and expressed one of the great laws of nature, after 

 which he had been groping all his life." 



It is to be regretted that Hunt did not leave a more con- 

 secutive statement of his theorv than that contained in his 



