I REPORT-^1856. 



Here at least the outline had been traced out with sufficient precision — 

 the general laws established on a tinn basis — the nomenclature framed with 

 logical exactness — the facts consistent with each other, and presented in a 

 scientific and luminous form. Thus a philosopher, liice Sir Humphry Davy, 

 who had contributed in so eminent a degree to bring the science into this 

 satisfactory condition, might, at the close of his career, have despaired of 

 adding anything worthy of his name to the domain of chemistry, and have 

 sighed for other worlds to subdue. 



But there was a World almost as little known to the chemists of that 

 period as was the Western Hemisphere to the Macedonian Conqueror, — 

 one comprising an infinite variety of important products, called into exist- 

 ence by the mysterious operation of the vital principle, and therefore placed, 

 as was imagined, almost beyond the reach of experimental research. 



This is the new World of Chemistry, which the continental philosophers in 

 the first instance, and subsequently those of our own country, have during the 

 last twenty years been busy in exploring, and by so doing have not only 

 bridged over tlie gulf which had before s-eparated by an impassable barrier 

 the kingdoms of inorganic and of organic nature, but also have added pro- 

 vinces as extensive and as fertile as tliose we were in possession of before, to 

 the patrimony of Science. 



It is indeed singular, that whilst the supposed elements of mineral bodies 

 are very numerous, the combinations between them should be comparatively 

 few ; whereas amongst those of vegetable and animal origin, where the ulti- 

 mate elements are so limited in point of number, the combinations which 

 they form appear almost infinite. Carbon and hydrogen, for instance, con- 

 stitute, as it were, the keystone of every organic fabric ; whilst oxygen, nitro- 

 gen, and less frequently sulphur and phosphorus, serve almost alone to build 

 up their superstructure. 



And yet what an infinity of products is brought about by ringing the 

 changes upon this scanty alpliabet ! Even one series of bodies alone, that 

 known by the name of the Fatty Acids, comprises several hundred well- 

 ascertained combinations, founded however upon a single class of hydro- 

 carbons or compound radicals, in which the carbon and hydrogen stand to 

 each other in equal atomic proportions, and are in each case acidified by 

 the same number of equivalents of oxygen. 



These acids are all monobasic, or combine with only one proportion of 

 base; but add to any one of them two equivalents of carbonic acid, and 

 you obtain a member of a second series, which is bibasic, or is capable of 

 forming two classes of salts. 



The above therefore constitute a double series, as it were, of organic acids, 

 the members of which are mutually related in the manner pointed out, and 

 diflfer from each other in their mode of combining according to the relation 

 between their respective elements. But already, by the labours of Hofmann 

 and of other chemists, two other double series ot acids, the one monobasic 

 the other bibasic, mutually related exactly in the same manner as those above, 

 have been brouglit to light ; each series no doubt characterized by an equally 

 numerous appendage of alcohols, of aethers, and of aldehydes, to say nothing 

 of the secondary compounds resulting from the union of each of these bodies 

 Avith others. 



Hence the more insight we obtain into the chemistry of organic substances, 

 the more we become bewildered with their complexity, and in investigating 

 these phaenomena, find ourselves in the condition of the explorer of a new 

 continent, who, although he might see the same sun over his head, the 

 same ocean rolling, at his feet, the same geological structure in the rocks 



