14 CHEMISTRY. 



means substances having some resemblance to metals, the 

 affix old being derived from a Greek word meaning like; 

 since, however, the non- metallic bodies are not at all like 

 metals, we will not use the term metalloid, but say non- 

 metals. In the preceding table the non-metals are indicated 

 by being printed in spaced type. 



Some of the elements, as arsenic, antimony, etc., seem to 

 possess a character intermediate between the metals and 

 non-metals ; sometimes chemists reckon them in one class, 

 and sometimes in the other. Of the sixty-three elements, 

 forty-nine are accounted metals and fourteen as non-met- 

 als. Of the latter, five are gases oxygen, nitrogen, chlo- 

 rine, fluorine, and hydrogen ; the solid non-metals are sul- 

 phur, phosphorus, carbon, iodine, silicon, boron, and the rare 

 bodies selenium and tellurium. There is but one liquid 

 non-metal, bromine, as there is but one liquid metal, mer- 

 cury. Although hydrogen is put among the non-metallic 

 elements in all treatises on chemistry, yet there are some 

 reasons for regarding it as a metal in a gaseous state. 

 Only fourteen of the elements are quite abundant, and of 

 these the great bulk of our earth, including its water and 

 air, is composed, the remaining forty-nine existing only in 

 small quantities, some of them exceedingly small com- 

 pared with those which are abundant. Of the forty- nine 

 metals, only ten are quite familiar to most people viz., 

 iron, copper, lead, tin, zinc, silver, gold, mercury, arsenic, 

 and bismuth. Most of the remainder are known only to 

 the chemist, and are very rare. 



6. The Elements as Found in Nature. Generally the ele- 

 ments are found in nature in combination one with anoth- 

 er. But some of them, as gold and platinum, are always 

 found uncombined. Others are sometimes combined and 

 sometimes not. Thus carbon in wood, in alcohol, and in 

 starch is combined, but in the diamond and in graphite it 



