Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 6.djvu/163

Rh ponderable relations of the latter, produce, by myriads of various combinations, myriads of substances which have no resemblance to each other. The strange powers of the elements and the mysterious forces concealed in matter make themselves known to us in a still more remarkable phenomenon, to which the name of isomery is given. Two bodies, thoroughly unlike as regards their properties, may present absolutely the same chemical composition with respect to quality and quantity of elements. "But in what do they differ?" it may be asked. They differ in the arrangement of their molecules. Coal and the diamond are identical in substance. Common phosphorus and amorphous phosphorus are one and the same in substance. Now, the odorous principles of plants offer some exceedingly curious cases of isomery. Thus the essence of turpentine, the essence of lemon, that of bergamot, of neroli, of juniper, of savin, of lavender, of cubebs, of pepper, and of gillyflower, are isomeric bodies, that is, they all have the same chemical composition. Subjected to analysis, all these products yield identical substances in identical proportions, that is, for each molecule of essence, ten atoms of carbon, and sixteen atoms of oxygen, as denoted by their common formula, C10O16. We see how these facts as to isomery prove that the qualities of bodies depend far more on the arrangement and the inner movements of their minute particles, never to be reached by our search, than on the nature of their matter itself; and they show, too, how far we still are from having penetrated to the first conditions of the action and forces of substances. Among odoriferous essences placed by chemists in the class of aldehydes may be named those of mint, rue, bitter almonds, anise, cummin, fennel, cinnamon, etc. The rest are ranged in the great series of ethers, which vary greatly in complexity, notwithstanding the simple uniformity of their primary elements.

Such is the chemical nature of most of the odorous principles of vegetable origin. But chemistry has not stopped short with ascertaining the inmost composition of these substances; it has succeeded in reproducing quite a number of them artificially, and the compounds thus manufactured, wholly from elements, in laboratories, are absolutely identical with the products extracted from plants. The speculations of theory on the arrangements of atoms, sometimes condemned as useless, do not merely aid in giving us a clearer comprehension of natural laws, which is something of itself, but they do more, as real instances prove; they often give us the key to brilliant and valuable inventions. An Italian chemist, who was then employed in Paris, Piria, in 1838, w r as the first who imitated by art a natural aromatic principle. By means of reactions suggested by theory, he prepared a salicilic aldehyde, which turned out to be the essence of meadow-sweet, so delicate and subtile in its odor. A few years later, in 1843, Cahours discovered methyl salicilic ether, and showed that it is identical with the essence of wintergreen. A year after, Wertheim