Page:On the various forces of nature and their relations to each other.djvu/112

108 are both colourless solutions, and in these glasses you cannot see any difference between them. But if I mix them, I shall have chemical attraction take place. I will pour the two together into this glass, and you will at once see, I have no doubt, a certain amount of change. Look, they are already becoming milky, but they are sluggish in their action—not quick as the others were—for we have endless varieties of rapidity in chemical action. Now, if I mix them together, and stir them, so as to bring them properly together, you will soon see what a different result is produced. As I mix them, they get thicker and thicker, and you see the liquid is hardening and stiffening, and before long I shall have it quite hard; and before the end of the lecture it will be a solid stone—a wet stone, no doubt, but more or less solid in consequence of the chemical affinity. Is not this changing two liquids into a solid body a wonderful manifestation of chemical affinity?

There is another remarkable circumstance in chemical affinity, which is, that it is capable of either waiting or acting at once. And this