2 INTRODUCTION. 



In directing our attention to the objects which surround us, 

 on the surface of our habitable globe, we are forcibly impressed 

 with astonishment at the infinite variety so uniformly displayed 

 in the Animal, Vegetable, and Mineral Kingdoms, their 

 beauty in formation, their relative dependence for support, 

 and the admirable economy of arrangement, by which their 

 mutual transition from one state to another is conducted, by 

 a system of unerring laws, which preserve undiminished ad 

 infinitum the original principles of which they are composed, 

 we are lost in admiration of that Sublime and Omnipotent 

 Power to which their existence is referrible, and on whose will 

 their duration depends. 



If we take of either the animal or vegetable bodies for 

 analyzation, we find their original elements of composition (as 

 generally known and admitted) do not exceed four. 



On turning to those of the mineral kingdom, we are indeed 

 astonished at the DISCORDANCE that appears in their accepted 

 system of conformation, imputing the existence of FIFTY- 

 FOUR ORIGINAL Or UNDECOMPOUNDED BODIES for such 



purpose. 



Should we inquire of ourselves, Is suck COMPLEXITY 

 reconcilable with the beautiful SIMPLICITY so eminently 

 displayed in the physical composition of ORGANIZED bodies ? 

 The reply will, it is presumed, be naturally in the negative. 



The next question that would suggest itself is, in the esta- 

 blishment of a SYSTEM acknowledging the existence of so 

 many undecompounded bodies as original principles, have che- 

 mists observed the needful precautions, to insure the absence 

 of ERROR, by correct analysis, by securing the impossibility 

 of escape of any of the probable component principles, by effec- 

 tually and hermetically sealing the chamber or apparatus in 

 which the experiments have been conducted, and by a minute 

 examination of the products, to ascertain that the gas or elastic 

 form into which the body under trial may have been in part 

 or wholly converted, is in itself HOMOGENEOUS and DIS- 



