COMBINATION, in law, a combina tion to commit a crime is an indictable CONSPIRACY (q. v.). A combination to commit an act which is injurious, im moral, or contrary to public policy, is in some but not in all cases held to amount to conspiracy. Combinations of work men to raise the rate of wages were formerly unlawful; but the law was amended in this respect in 1825, and now such combinations are freely per mitted, provided they effect their pur poses by lawful means.
In mathematics, the different collec tions • which may be made of certain given quantities without regard to the order in which they are arranged in each collection. The term is almost always mentioned in conjunction with permutations in which there is regard to the order of the quantities, and a department of arithmetic is technically called Permutations and Combinations. If a, b, and c be three quantities to be taken two together, there will be three possible Combinations, that is, ways of arranging them in pairs, without allow ing b to stand before a, or c before the two letters which precede it in the alphabet. These combinations will be
ab, ac, and be. But there can be six permutations of the same three letters, i. e., six distinct pairs of them if per mission be granted to put them in any order one pleases, viz., ab, ba, ac, ca, be, cb.
In chemistry, the act of uniting by means of chemical affinity; the state of being so united. There are two kinds of chemical combination, that by weight and that by volume. In a large num ber of instances the law relating to Com bination by weight is as follows: When two bodies, A and B, are capable of uniting, the several quantities of B, which combine with a given or constant quantity of A, stand to one another in very simple ratios. With regard to gases combining by volume, the law is that the combining volumes of all ele mentary gases are equal, excepting those of phosphorus and arsenic, which are only half those of the other elements in the gaseous state, and those of mer cury and cadmium, which are double those of the other elements.