pairs and two units.

SODIUM (Plate VI, 2).

It is convenient to consider sodium next, because it is the basic pattern
on which not only copper, silver and gold are formed, but also chlorine,
bromine and iodine.

[Illustration]

When sodium is set free from its gaseous condition, it divides up into
thirty-one bodies--twenty-four separate funnels, four bodies derived from
the two central globes, and three from the connecting rod. The funnels
become spheres, and each contains four enclosed spheres, with more or less
complicated contents. Each central globe yields a sextet and a quartet, and
the rod sets free two quartets and a peculiarly formed sextet.

When the proto-compounds are dissociated, the funnel-sphere sets free: (1)
the contents of _a_, rearranged into two groups of four within a common
sphere; the sphere yields four duads as hyper-compounds; (2) the contents
of _b_, which unite themselves into a quartet, yielding two duads as
hyper-compounds; and (3) the contents of the two spheres, _c_, which
maintain their separation as meta-compounds, and become entirely
independent, the atoms within the sphere revolving round each other, but
the spheres ceasing their revolution round a common axis, and going off in
different directions. The atoms break off from each other, and gyrate in
independent solitude as hyper-"compounds." Thus each funnel yields finally
ten hyper-bodies.

The part of the central globe, marked _d_, with its six atoms, whirling