224 
The idea thrown out by Dumas, to which Liebig alludes, 
was, that ether might be considered as a base, and the acid 
ethers as salts of that base. This idea Dumas himself, on 
further consideration, rejected, and assumed ether to be a 
hydrate of olefiant gas, which he made the basic element in 
the acid ethers, thus rejecting the form cyH;0 + acid, and 
taking Ho -+(c4yH, + acid,) as the foundation of all his sub- 
sequent researches. The sense in which Dumas considered 
ether as a base, was the same as that in which chemists re- 
gard the vegetable alcalies as bases,—that is, bodies which 
neutralize acids and form salts,—without seeking more pro- 
foundly into their constitution, or involving any hypothesis ; 
whilst the essence of the views propounded by Dr. Kane and 
Berzelius consisted in considering ether as the oxide of a pe- 
culiar compound radical (Ethyl. Ethereum) cyu;. resembling 
the ammonium of the ammonia series,—an idea which Dumas 
never thought of proposing at all, and indeed one which 
the state of science, at the time of his researches on the 
ethers, could scarcely permit him to conceive. 
So far from the Ether Theory being less complete, as 
promulgated by Dr. Kane, than when proposed by Berze- 
lius, Dr. Kane asserted the reverse to be really the case, 
for it was only after Liebig himself had modified Ber- 
zelius’ views, that the continental theory became identi- 
cal with that previously brought forward in Dublin,—Ber- 
zelius having destroyed the unity of the theory by making 
alcohol c,H; + 0, which we now know to be a totally different 
substance, and Liebig having shown that it should be con- 
sidered, cyH;0 -+ Ho, which it had always been considered in 
the theory proposed by Dr. Kane. Thus in the only point 
in which the theories differed, the form of Berzelius was the 
less complete of the two. 
Dr. Kane has, since the promulgation of that theory, been 
induced, from the results of researches in other departments, 
to suspend his implicit belief in its sufficiency. Having ad- 
