Abstract
IT seems to me that Mr. Tolver Preston in his letter on the above to NATURE (vol. xxii. p. 192) has somewhat overlooked the con ext in the objections he urges against Mr. Crookes's remark that βan isolated molecule is an inconceivable entity.β It is plain that Mr. Crookes meant this statement to appiy to the quality, not the existence of a molecule, and granting Mr. Crookes's premisses regarding the constitution of matter, it appears a very fair deduction; since if the three states of matter (as we know it), viz., solid, liquid, and gas, owe their different qualities merely to different modes of motion of the ultimate molecules, it is quite conceivable as well as logical to suppose that the latter have a nature totally unlike that of the effects of their motion, and therefore inconceivable to us by reason of its dissimilarity to anything of which we at present possess any knowledge.
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ARCHIBALD, E. A Fourth State of Matter. Nature 22, 218β219 (1880). https://doi.org/10.1038/022218c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/022218c0
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