m 2910.) with the State of Aggregation of Matter. 101 
between the organic and inorganic salts. From these results it appeared as 
if some property of salt solutions other than their surface tension was 
concerned in their disaggregating capacity, and the clue as to this property 
was afforded by certain generalisations on the rate of action in heterogeneous 
systems, first put forward by Noyes and Whitney,* to explain the rate of 
solutions of solids in liquids, and subsequently extended toa more general 
form by Nernst.t These generalisations can be extended to the adsorption 
phenomena under consideration in the present communication. 
If an action takes place in a heterogeneous system, its principal seat will 
be at the limiting surfaces of the phases. In the case of the solution of 
a solid substance in water or of a solid base in an acid, the solvent action 
may be assumed to take place within an infinitely short interval of time. 
At any particular moment during the course of action, the solid phase will 
be surrounded by a layer of liquid of different composition to that of the 
remainder of the liquid phase. To establish equilibrium, molecules will pass 
through this layer (the diffusion phase), and the rate of action will be 
a function of the rate at which diffusion will take place. The constant A, 
representing the reaction rate, may be represented by the equation 
ee Area of surface x coefficient of diffusion 
Thickness of the ditfusion layer 
Now the coefficient of diffusion, and probably also the thickness of the 
diffusion layer, will depend upon another physical constant of the liquid 
phase, viz., the viscosity—the more viscous this phase, the more slowly the 
reaction will take place, other conditions being comparable. 
These considerations will apply to the globulin system. Excess of 
globulin in the presence of salt solutions, if the hypothesis as to its nature 
be correct, forms a triphasic system containing the associated solid globulin 
aggregates (external phase), the dissociated globulin molecules in colloidal 
solution (internal phase), and the salt solution (dispersion medium). At the 
surface of the solid globulin the chief seat of action will be found, and all 
three phases will co-exist. Equilibrium will depend upon (a) the adsorption 
of the salt molecules by the dissociated globulin, (0) the rate of diffusion of 
these globulin molecules (with or without adsorbed salt molecules) from the 
solid globulin surface outwards, (c) the rate of diffusion of salt molecules 
inwards towards the same surface to establish equilibrium in the liquid 
phase, which has been altered in this position by adsorption of the salt 
from solution. The amount of adsorption is, as, already stated, a function 
* ‘ Zeitsch. Physik. Chem..’ 1897, vol. 23, p. 689. 
“+ ‘Zeitsch. Physiol. Chem.,’ 1904, vol. 47, p. 52. See also Brunner, same volume, p. 56. 
