sill 
1888. ] 175 [Hunt. 
the whole chemistry of solids and liquids is only intelligible when re- 
garded as a history of just such complex inorganic acids and salts; that 
the distinction between organic and inorganic chemistry is no longer tena- 
ble; that the same principles of homology and polymerism are applicable 
alike to the bodies of the carbon series and the silicon series; that the 
native crystalline carbonates, or carbon-spars, are polycarbonates, with 
equivalent weights of not less than from 1500 to 2500 ; that the pyroxenes, 
feldspars, and tourmalines are polysilicates of equally complex constitu- 
tion, and are represented by formulas which show the existence among 
them both of polymers, probably homologous, and of anisomeric homo- 
logues. These conceptions, all of which were explicitly set forth and 
defended in 1852 and 1853, underlie the writer’s philosophy of the mineral 
kingdom, as then enunciated, and as persistently maintained to the pre- 
sent date.’’* 
5. It was not, however, until a much later date that a farther attempt 
was made to fix the integral weight, as I have designated the so-called 
molecular weight of solid species. By extending to such species the law 
of equivalent volumes, the conclusion was reached that their integral 
weights were even far greater than had been suspected by the writer in 
1858. In fact, that of water itself, the unit of specific gravity for liquids 
and solids, being in round numbers 21,400,+ the weights for these various 
species must be as much greater as their specific gravities are higher than 
this unit. We thus find that the solid forms of carbon dinoxyd and sili- 
con dinoxyd, of carbonate of lime, and even of the ammonia-cobalt salts, 
and the highest members of the polytungstate series, represent in all cases 
polymeric or condensed derivatives of the normal species ; which is for the 
most part unknown, or appears, as in the case of CO, and H,0, in a gase- 
ous form. <A species like calcite of specific gravity 2.729, is represented 
by 584CCaO, or by C5g,CasgyOj752 = 58,400. In like manner other min- 
eral species must be represented by formulas more complex, and weights 
far higher, than those deduced by Gibbs for his polytungstates. In the 
case of such compounds, partial substitutions and small additions, affect- 
ing but slightly the centesimal composition of a species, may nevertheless 
be essential to its chemical constitution, as shown by Gibbs in the cases of 
silicic and phosphoric oxyds added to the polytungstates. In the formula 
above assigned to calcite, with Ca... the substitution of Mg,), would in- 
troduce into the species only 0.72 of magnesia. Such substitutions and 
* A New Basis for Chemistry, 1887, § 27. 
+ In liquid water 1192 volumes of water-vapor at standard temperature and pressure 
are condensed into a single volume, which if H2O = 17.96 gives an integral weight of 
21,408 ; but in view of the uncertainty still prevailing as to the precise weight of oxygen, 
hydrogen being unity, the number 21,400 is adopted as a close approximation. In former 
publications by the writer, by an error in calculation, instead of 1192Hz0O the formula 
of water has been given as 1628H20, which with H20 = 17.9638, gave an integral 
weight of 29,244. This mistake was corrected in a note on The Integral Weight of Water, 
in the L. E. and D, Philos. Magazine, for April, and in the American Journal of Science, for 
May, 1888. See also the author’s New Basis for Chemistry, 2d Edition, passim. 
PROC, AMER. PHILOS. SOC. xxv. 128. Ww. PRINTED ocT. 18, 1888. 
