Passing to the consideration of atoms in motion, while Dalton and
Graham indicated that they were in a continual state of motion, we
were indebted to Joule for the first accurate determination of the
rate of that motion. Clerk-Maxwell had calculated that a hydrogen
molecule, moving at the rate of seventy miles per minute, must, in one
second of time, knock against others no fewer than eighteen thousand
million times. This led to the reflection that in nature there is no
such thing as great or small, and that the structure of the smallest
particle, invisible even to our most searching vision, may be as
complicated as that of any one of the heavenly bodies which circle
round our sun. How did this wonderful atomic motion affect their
chemistry?