ELEMENTS OF THE MODERNS. 



91 



some lover of science, to devote his time and talents to the 

 consideration, how far our present systems of physics and 

 chemistry were, or were not, arduously complex, and capable 

 of improvement by a reduction to a state of consistent simpli- 

 city, as regards the original elements ? 



The following catalogue enumerates that extensive corps, 

 whose ranks every lover of science must delight in seeing 

 reduced, by the abstraction of one name which has been 

 allowed to hold a position so eminent, unless unquestionably 

 supported in its title on the basis of truth. 



The reference now made, I beg to repeat, is to the follow- 

 m & fifty -f our bodies, at the present time acknowledged in our 

 systems of chemistry, to be the original elements, or undecom- 

 pounded constituents, of which all other substances in nature 

 are supposed to be formed. 



There are but three among this number which form original 

 homogeneous gases, and as that condition is the surest and 

 best test of originality, there ought to be homogeneous gases 

 of every denomination of matter, distinguished as undecom- 

 pounded. Thus we should have an auric gas, an argentine 

 gas, &c. &c., which is not the case. On the contrary, the 

 only three gases to be denominated perfectly homogeneous, 



