2 1 8 Literary and Philosophical Society. 



except a change of figure in the smallest portions of the 

 bodies. A thousand small cubes may be put into a 

 smaller space than the same number of spheres of the 

 same mass and weight, and the heap made by the spheres 

 is not so great as if they were converted into stars, and so 

 on. When the specific gravity is altered, no matter by 

 what means, the figure and situation of the smallest parts 

 can no longer remain the same." 



* Page 20. " Besides change of figure, I know no suffi- 

 cient reason for all that has been said ; for if we completely 

 banished the figure and viewed the properties of the body 

 as something substantial in matter, I know not how we 

 could explain without contradiction the everyday ex- 

 perience ; or we must, as Snellius with refraction, explain 

 it by the will of God, which settles the matter at once ; 

 but if my understanding is to lay hold of the method by 

 which anything acts, this explanation will not be satis- 

 factory." 



* Page 28. *' But we have remarked that any combination 

 of bodies, on account of the figure of their parts, depends 

 on static laws, and there it is proved that the motion of a 

 weight is so much the slower the smaller the force is in 

 comparison with it. Let us apply this to the present case 

 and bodies will appear to us as so many weights, and their 

 common solvent as a force which acts more slowly or more 

 rapidly on one or the other. It follows, then, that the 

 more rapidly a common solvent unites with a body, the 

 greater must be its degree of combination, and we obtain 

 therefore this law, (already given, p. 210.) 



* *' The affinity of bodies with a common solvent is in the 

 inverse ratio of the time taken to dissolve!' 



'Page 31. ''We have now a universal law, according to 



