Friedel and Crafts on the Ethers of Silicie Acid. 155 
In seeking for the causes of these facts, I have found much 
that is interesting, and somewhat that I believe to have been 
hitherto unpresented. 
The immense proportiongof living births to the pregnancies 
in the foreign as compared with the native and protestant pop- 
ulation of Massachusetts, already referred to, is to be explained 
by the watchful protection exercised by the Catholic church 
over foetal life. However we may regard the dogma on which 
this rests, the sanctity of infant baptism, there can be no ques- 
tion that it has saved to the world millions of human lives. But 
of the various corroborative testimony to which I have alluded, 
and of other matters pertaining to this subject I shall elsewhere 
speak.* 
f 
Same nature, both against our Maker and society, as to destroy 
an infant, a child, or a.man.”+ 
Arr. XVII.— Research on the Ethers of Silicic Acid; by C. Frrz- 
DEL and J. M. CRaFTs. 
THE determination of the atomic weight of silicium has given 
rise to more discussion than that of any other element; nor does 
this astonish us, when we consider the number and com plicated 
nature of the compounds of silicium and the peculiar properties 
which separate it from all the other elements 
ven at the present day chemists and mineralogists are not 
agreed whether to write silica SiO, or SiO,, and recently 
Scheerer} has published a paper, in which he brings up the old 
a#guments in favor of the latter formula, and adds to them some 
new ones, based on the study of the action of silicic acid on 
carbonate of soda at a red heat, as well as on Wohler’s research 
on leucon.§ We will not discuss these arguments, as we think 
that a sufficient reply to them will be Sand in the facts brought 
to light by this research, facts which are impossible to reconcile 
with the opinion of Prof. Scheerer. vee 
* North American Medico-Chirurg. Review ; Philadelphia, Jan. 1859, et seq. 
+ Med. Ethics, p. 79. 
Journ, fiir praktische Chemie, xci, 415. 
Ann. der Chem. u. Pharm., exxvii, 257. 
