270 Scientific Intelligence. 
The new Chemical Calculus.—On the 3d of May, 1866, Sir Bry- 
JAMIN Bropig, Professor of Chemistry in the University of Oxford, read 
a paper before the Royal Society, entitled “The Calculus of Chemical 
operations; being a method for the investigation by means of symbols, 
of the laws of the distribution of weight in chemical change; Part l 
On the construction of Chemical Symbols.” This paper was published 
in the Philosophical Transactions for 1866, part 11, 856, and, in abstract, 
in the Philosophical Magazine, rv, xxxii, 227. On the 6th of June, 1867, 
Sir Benjamin Brodie’s communications, those of Williamson, Chem. News, 
xvi, 3, July 5; of Wanklyn and Davey, Phil. Mag., IV, xxxiv, 26, July, 
1867; of Kekulé, The Laboratory, i, 303, July 27; and ofA. Crum 
Brown, Phil. Mag., IV, xxxiv, 129, August, may be mentioned. The 
views of Prof. Kekulé, contained in the first of a series of apers OB 
Theoretical Chemistry, contributed to that valuable little journal, are 
stated so clearly, and at the same time are so just, that we reproduce the 
chemical equations ;” and the 3d on “The principles of symbolic classi- 
ton.” Only the first of these has yet appeared. te 
_ Ihave no hesitation in saying that, from a philosophical point of vie™s 
satel . philosophical po ida! 
Ido not believe in the actual existence of atoms, taking the word in - 
pore eo nion of indivisible particles of matter, I rather 
ei 
= lssserseter » and of numerous other properties of the so-called 4 
ac however, I regard the assumption of atoms, not only 4 
to a theory of the constitution of chemical atoms—important ae 
neh & knowledge might be for the general philosophy of matter 
pe make but little alteration in Seeitiaey iteelt The chemical nied 
gic Ways remain the chemical unit; and for specially chemical ¥ 
