Gorham^s Elements of Chemistry. 331 



tie to the fabric, although the endless relations of quantity 

 continue to afford inexhaustible topics for the researches of 

 theoretical mathematics, and we may add also, innumera- 

 ble practical applications of these theoretical speculations. 

 After all the labour that has been bestowed on the subject, 

 the study of the external forms and of the internal constitution 

 of natural things has not been exhausted, — in a word, Natural 

 History and Chemistry continue to afford an endless variety 

 of topics of observation and research. Every year new 

 minerals, animals and plants present themselves to the min- 

 eralogist, the zoologist and the botanist, respectively j this is 

 true, even in the oldest countries, in those that have been 

 most minutely and faithfully explored, and every voyage and 

 every tour of discovery, in unknown or imperfectly known 

 regions, adds abundantly to the stores of natural history. 

 It is however true that in the greater number of countries 

 the most conspicuous and important objects have been al- 

 ready observed and described, and particular naturalists 

 have, in a sense appropriated them as their peculiar prop- 

 erty ; it is also true that in new countries conspicuous subjects 

 occasionally occur, but most of the objects now found are more 

 minute and less valuable than those that were before discov- 

 ered, and the labour of the present period is often bestowed 

 rather on the gleanings of the field, than on its first abound- 

 ing harvest. With that science, whose object it is to as- 

 certain the composition of bodies, the case is however wide- 

 ly different. It is, in all probability, in its very nature, in- 

 exhaustable. Its domain being co-extensive with the phys- 

 ical creation, (or rather with that portion of it which is ac- 

 cessible to man,) chemistry is bound to attempt the analy- 

 sis of all things, in earth sea and air. It is required of it 

 to unfold, not merely the immediate state of combination, 

 in which the parts exist, but to discover as well their ulti- 

 mate elements, as their proximate principles. Great diver- 

 sity of opinions has existed respecting the elements of 

 bodies ; these opinions have vibrated between the four as- 

 sumed by the ancients, and the forty, fifty, or more admitted by 

 the moderns. The progress of discovery has tended con- 

 stantly to increase their number, and yet without any abso- 

 lute certainty, that any of them are really elementary. In- 

 deed, it is obvious, that this certainty can never be attained, 

 for were the great number of elementary bodies, now ad- 



