Familiar Letters on Chemistry

Until very recently it was supposed that the physical qualities of bodies, i.e. hardness, colour, density, transparency, and still more their chemical properties, must depend upon the nature of their elements, or upon their composition. It was tacitly received as a principle, that two bodies containing the same elements in the same proportion, must of necessity possess the same properties. We could not imagine an exact identity of composition giving rise to two bodies entirely different in their sensible appearance and chemical relations.