The new chemistry

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THE

Inteenational Scientific Series

VOL. IX.

I

NEW

THE CHEMISTEY.

BY

JOSIAH P. COOKE,

ERVJNG PROFESSOR of CHEMISTRY AND MINERALOGY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY

■WITH THIRTY- ONE ILLHSTEATIONS.

SECOND EDITIOIT.

Henry S. King & Co.

65 CoRNuiLL & 12 Paternoster Row, London.

Co

(A

WELLCOME INSTITUTE

LIBR/'-RY

Coll.

welMOmec

Call

No.

QyS) ICO

[Z%e rights of translation and rej)roductio7i are reserved.}

TO

JOHN A. LOWELL, LL.D.,

BOSTON, ILiSSACHUSETTS.

Dear Sir :

From the early lectures of the Lowell Institute I derived, when a lay, my taste for the science lohich became the occuj^aUon of my after-life, and it has since often heen my jpi^imlege to ilhbstrate lefore the intelligent audiences — which, for more than thirty winters, the Institute has gathered ^mder your direction—the results of the stxidies that I there legan. Allow me, then, to dedicate to you this volume, as an expression of my indebtedness to the foundation yoic have so long and so ally administered. With great respect,

Your obedient servant,

JOSIAn P. COOKE, Je.

I https ://arch i ve . o rg/detai Is/b2 1 497278

PKEFACE.

The lectures now published were delivered before tbe Lowell Institute, in Boston, in the autumn of 1ST2. They aimed to present the modem theories of chemistry to an intelligent but not a professional audience, and to give to the philosophy of the science a logical consistency, by resting it on the law of Avogadro. Since many of the audience had studied the elements of chemistry, as they were formerly taught under the dualistic system, it was also made an object to point out the chief characteristics by which the new chemistry differed from the old. The limitations of a course of popular lectures necessarily precluded a full presentation of the subject, and ouly the more prominent and less technical features of the new system were discussed. In writing out his notes for the press, the author has retained the lecture style, because it is so well adapted for the popular exposition of scientiiic subjects ; but he

G PEEFACE.

is painfully conscious that any description of experiments must necessarily fall far short of giving that force of impression which the phenomena of Nature produce when they speak for themselves, and, in weighing the arguments presented, he must beg his readers to make allowances for this fact.

Cambeidge, September 6, 1873.