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COHESION AND COHESION FIGURES.[1]

  [Footnote 1:  Notes from a lecture given to the Halifax Scientific
  Society, July 19, 1886.]

By WILLIAM ACKROYD, F.I.C.

1.  A Law of Solubility.

It is customary to regard cohesion as the force which binds together molecules of the same substance, and in virtue of which the particles of solids and liquids are kept together, and also to speak of the attraction exerted between particles of two different bodies as adhesion.  The distinction between cohesion and adhesion is a conventional one.  The similarity, if not identity, of the two forces is demonstrated by the fact that while cohesion is exerted between particles of the same body, adhesion is exerted with most force between particles of allied bodies.  Generally speaking, organic bodies require organic solvents; inorganic bodies, inorganic solvents.  For example, common salt is highly soluble in water, but not in ether, and many fats are soluble in ether, but not in water.  So many cases like these will suggest themselves to the chemist that I am justified in making the following generalization:  A body will dissolve in a solvent to which it is allied more readily than in one to which it in highly dissimilar. Exceptions to the law undoubtedly exist, but none so striking as the following in support of it, viz., that the metal mercury is the only known true solvent for many metals at the normal temperature.

2.  Its Connection with Mendeleeff’s Periodic Law.

From this standpoint the whole subject of solution is deserving of fresh attention, as it appears highly probable that, just as Prof.  Carnelley has shown by the use of my meta-chromatic scale, the colors of chemical compounds come under definite laws, which he has discovered and formulated in connection with Mendeleeff and Newlaud’s periodic law,[2] so, likewise, may the solubility of an allied group of compounds, in regard to any given solvent under constant conditions of temperature, conform to similar laws; that, e.g., the chlorides of H, Na, Cu, and Ag, in Mendeleeff’s Group I., may vary in their solubility in water from an extreme of high solubility in the case of hydrogen chloride to the opposite extreme of comparative insolubility in the case of silver chloride.  In this natural series of compounds, hydrogen chloride is the body nearest akin to water, and silver chloride the most remote in kinship.

  [Footnote 2:  Philosophical Magazine, August, 1884.]

3.  A Solidified Vortex Ring.