254 ^^ '^^^ ALKALINE MATTER IN SERUM, &C. 



tSeif aid to copic obserrAtion, a great numb'er of important facts, which 

 have enriched chemistry v/ithin the last 20 years, would, in 

 rU probability, have remained undiscovered ; and this coun- 

 try might not have obtained that first rank in philosophical 

 chemistry, to which it has but lately been raifeed, and' 

 which it had long held in other departments of science. ' 

 Is it necessary that I should specify particular instances ? 

 Can any philosopher, attentive to the progrtiss of analyti- 

 cal chemistry; overlook so many discoveries, in which nei- 

 ther furnace nor forge, nor subterraneous laboratovies have 

 been concerned, in which a watch' glass, a blow pipe, and si 

 few drops of chemical reagents, have been all the instri;- 

 merits required ? Were not, for instance, the analyses of 

 the Iceland springs, by Dr. Black, (the same eminent phi- 

 losopher to whom Dr. Pearson appeals, as an authority 

 against microscopic observations), performed upon quanti- 

 ties of saline matter, of astonishing minuteness? Surely Dr. 

 Pearson cannot have forgotten, that it was by the accurate 

 * , Z';;""' "; examination of only a few grains bf matter, that the nature 

 of no less than five kinds of urinary calculi has been ascer- 

 tained, and their discrimination rendered easy and certain ; 

 that the nature of diajnond has been established ; that na 

 less than four new metals have been discovered \n the crude 

 ore of platina ; that the similarity between nil the meteoric 

 stones has been proved; that the identity of the chemical 

 agencies of electricity, whether excited by the common 

 machine, or by the voltaic battery, has been demonstrated ; 



* , that in a neighbouring country the formation of crystals 



has been explained upon systematic principles ; that among 

 •us a new and wonderfully accurate instrument of crystallo- 

 graphy has been invented ; and above all, that the metal- 

 lic bages of alkalies, those extraordinary bodies which Nature 

 had hitherto concealed under an impenetrable disguise, 

 have at last been brought to light. Let it be remembered 

 as one of the most glorious circumstances of that discovery, 

 that it \yas by examining mere atoms of these substances, 

 that their properties were first ascertained ; and that when, 

 iu ponsequence of subsequent improvements in the mode 

 -of. obtaining these bodies, they were procured in larger 

 jjuanutiLS, and their general properties were reexamined, 

 '->•■:" no* 



