Note 30 — Chapter IV
Reading edition
“In the annual report on the progress of chemistry, presented to the Royal Academy of Stockholm, in March 1840, I have proposed to designate by the term allotropic state, that dissimilar condition which is observed in certain elements, and long known examples of which are found in the different forms of carbon, as graphite and diamond.
“Although these dissimilar conditions, which I have here called allotropic, have long since attracted attention in one or two elements, still they have been regarded as exceptions to the general rule. It is at present my object to show that they are not so rare; that it is probably rather a general property of the elements to appear in different allotropic conditions; and that although we have hitherto been unable to obtain several of the elements when uncombined in their allotropic states, still their compounds indicate the same with tolerable distinctness.”—Berzelius on the Allotropy of the Elementary Bodies, &c.: Poggendorff’s Annalen, 1844. Scientific Memoirs, vol. iv. p. 240.