312 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts, and Letters. 
This is in harmony with the fact that magnesium, amalgam does 
not form when magnesium and mercury are brought together 
at ordinary temperatures f it requires a higher temperature in 
order that the union of the metals will take place. 
The view that solutions are chemical combinations of solvent 
and solute may seem, somewhat antiquated at the present time 
when purely physical conceptions of solutions are in predomi- 
nence. But this older view is still held by eminent chemists 
and physicists, for it gives an adequate cause for the process of 
solution, for the thermal changes accompanying the latter, and 
for the fact that (exclusive of the mass) the properties of a 
solution are never found to be quite equal to the sum of the 
properties of solvent and solute. Moreover, facts known at 
present concerning both dilute and concentrated solutions are 
entirely compatible 1 with it, and it will no doubt prove a most 
valuable aid in further research. 
Laboratory of Physical Chemistry, 
University of Wisconsin, Madison. 
iAt ordinary temperatures the affinity between the metals is not 
able to overcome their cohesions. Compare the work of Wanklyn and 
Chapman on magnesium amalgam in the Jour. Chem. Soc. (2) 4, 141. 
