Page:A History of Hindu Chemistry Vol 1.djvu/157

Rh are stones, lumps of clay, etc. The union of integrant parts is hard, soft or cumulative as stones, flowers, cotton, etc.

"2. Water, which has the qualities of earth; excepting smell, and with the addition of viscidity. Odour, when observable in water is adscititious, arising from mixture of earthy particles.

"The distinguishing quality of water is coolness. It is accordingly defined as a substance cool to the feel.

"It it eternal, as atoms; transient, as aggregates. The qualities of the first are constant likewise; those of the latter inconstant.

"Organic aqueous bodies are beings abiding in the realm of Varuna. The organ of taste is aqueous: witness the saliva. Unorganic waters are rivers, seas, rain, snow, hail, etc.

"It is by some maintained, that hail is pure water rendered solid by the supervention of an unseen virtue: others imagine its solidity to be owing to mixture of earthly particles.

"3. Light is coloured, and illumines other substances; and to the feel is hot: which is its