^ Pr. Turner's Elements of Chemistry^ 



.non-metallic acidifiable combustibles with each other." It 

 includes the important subject of ammonia, of the varieties 

 of carburetted hydrogen, sulphuretted and phosphuretted 

 hydrogen, and cyanogen and its compounds. The metals are 

 then treated of, and to these succeed their salts ; and 

 though the execution of this part of the work betrays some 

 .haste, it shows also considerable reading, and some origin- 

 ality : the general views are well and clearly sketched, but 

 there are many points upon which we are entirely at variance 

 with our author ; and we more especially object to his ac- 

 count of the action of chlorides upon water, and to his notions 

 concerning the ** muriates of oxides," a class of compounds 

 of which, with one or two exceptions, we are disinclined to 

 admit the existence. If common salt be a chloride of sodium, 

 and experiment obliges us so to regard it, what is there in 

 its aqueous solution that should lead us to consider it as 

 containing a muriate of soda ; what evidence of any new 

 arrangement of elements ? Dr. T. is certainly in mistake, 

 when he says, " for all practical purposes, therefore, the 

 solution of a metallic chloride in water may be viewed as 

 the muriate of an oxide, and on this account I shall always 

 regard it as such in the present treatise." This inconside- 

 rate dogma taints much of the reasoning upon the chlo- 

 rides, &c., and is manifestly culled in the Thomsonian school, 

 though we have indeed heard that a Professor at Edinburgh 

 thus addresses his pupils upon the above subject: "The 

 elaborate researches of the illustrious Davy have taught us 

 that common salt is a binary compound of chlorine and 

 sodium, a chloride, therefore, or a chloruret of sodium. But 

 it is only chloride of sodium whilst quiescent in the salt- 

 cellar ; for no sooner does it come into contact with the 

 salivary humidity of the fauces, than, by the play of affini- 

 ties, which I have elsewhere explained, the sodium becomes 

 Boda, and the chlorine generates muriatic acid ; — that, 

 therefore, which upon the table is chloride of sodium, is 

 muriate of soda in the mouth ; and this again, when desic- 

 cated or deprived of humidity, retrogrades into its former 

 state." 



Dr. Turner again falls into error, as we humbly conceivCj 

 in calling certain salts, such, for instance, as those of the per- 

 oxide of iron, sesquisalts, a term properly applied in those 

 cases only where one proportional of a protoxide unites with 

 one and a half of an acid, such for instance as the sesquicar- 

 bonate of soda, &c., but in the sesquisulphate of iron, one 

 proportional of the peroxide contains 1.5 of oxygen, and ne- 



