1866.] MEETING OP AMERICAN ASSOCIATION. 115 



THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION AT BUFFALO, 

 AUGUST, 1866. 



ON A NEW NOMENCLATURE. 

 BY PROF. S. D. TILLMAN OF NEW YORK. 



The author, in this paper, gave a brief account of the amend- 

 ments and alterations made in our present nomenclature, which 

 originated with DeMorveau, Lavoisier, Bertholet and Fourcroy in 

 France, in the year 1787. He showed furthermore, that it cannot 

 be adapted to the new views of chemical combinations, according 

 to the atomic system, without producing serious confusion, and 

 rendering all our present works on chemistry comparatively 

 worthless. He therefore proposed to let the old nomenclature 

 remain as the exponent of the system of combining proportions, or 

 so called " equivalents," and to give new names to atomic 

 combinations, which would express both the views of Berzelius 

 and Gerhardt. The method was devised by him many years ago, 

 but until there was a general agreement among advanced chemists 

 with regard to the numbers expressing atomic weights, it would 

 have been useless. Under the lead of Gibbs, in this country, and 

 Canizzaro in Europe, those of the unitary school who double the 

 numbers represented by the symbols 0, C, and S, now also double 

 the numbers of at least fifty other symbols, and' thus all objections 

 have been removed in regard to using a system of names based 

 upon atomic weights. The nomenclature now proposed is also 

 adapted to the typical classification, first proposed by a distinguished 

 member of this Association, Dr. T. Sterry Hunt, which, with a 

 few modifications, has been very generally adopted by European 

 chemists. Prof. Tillman's method of construction may be briefly 

 explained in the following heads : 



1. The system is based on abbreviations of the universally 

 received names of the metals, and on the chemical symbols of 

 the metalloids, or non-metallic elements, with such modifications 

 as were imperatively required. 



2. The name of each chemical element relates not to its mass, 

 but only to a minimum combining proportion, termed an atom, or 

 to some multiple of it. The atom is therefore the unit of meas- 

 urement, and the starting point of the scale in each series of 

 compounds. 



3. The atomic name of each of the 50 metals now well-known, 

 consists of two syllables, and ends with the consonant m. 



