ong advocated by Armstrong;
and the present writer has recently shown that it is a necessary
consequence of the electrical theory of chemical affinity,[7] and that
the structure of the resulting groupings, or compound aggregates, may
be partially studied by means of floating magnets, somewhat after the
manner of Alfred Mayer.[8]

[7] See _Nature_, vol. 70, p. 176, June 23, 1904.

[8] See an article on "Modern Views of Chemical Affinity" by the
present writer in a magazine called _Technics_, for September
1904.

It may be well here to explain to students that one of the lines of
argument which lead to the conclusion that the water molecule, as it
ordinarily exists, is really complex and massive, is based upon
measurements of the Faraday dielectric constant for water; for this
constant, or "specific inductive capacity," is found to be very large,
something like 50 times that of air or free ether; whereas for glass it
is only 5 or 6 times that of free space. The dielectric constant of a
substance generally increases with the density or massiveness of its
molecule,--indeed, the value of this constant is one of the methods
whereby matter displays its interaction with and loading of the free
ether of space,--and any such density as the conventional nine times
that of hydrogen for the molecule of water would be wholly unable to
explain its immense dielectric constant.

The influence of the massiveness of a water molecule is also displayed
in its power of tearing asunder or dissociating any salts or other
simple chemical substance introduced into it; common salt, for
instance, is found always to have a certain percentage of its molecules
knocked or torn asunder directly it is dissolved in water, so that, in
addition to a number of salt molecules in solution, there are a few
positively charged sodium atoms and a few negatively charged chlorine
atoms, existing in a state of loose attraction to the water aggregate,
and amenable to the smallest electric force; which, when applied, urges
the chlorine one way and the sodium the other way, so that they can be
removed at an electrode and their place supplied by freshly dissociated
molecules of salt, thus bringing about its permanent electro-chemical
decomposition, and enabling the water to behave as an electrolytic
conductor directly a little salt or acid is dissolved in it.

The power of the water molecule to associate itself with molecules of
other subst