oer Re 
AND ON SOME SUBJECTS OF CHEMICAL THEORY. 323 
small portion. The whole evidently depends on difference of 
constitution. Sulphurous acid, sulphuretted hydrogen, and 
carbonic acid, are binary compounds, and therefore yield no 
water, nor retain any in intimate combination; and in the 
others, the proportion of water supposed to exist will be found 
to have no relation to the attraction of the acid to water, so far 
as this can be inferred, as is evident from the example of phos- 
phoric acid affording as much as sulphuric or nitric ; but to the 
relations of its elements, and more particularly of its oxygen, 
to the radical. This last fact affords nearly a demonstration, that 
the constitution is that of simultaneous combination of the ele- 
ments, and not that of water and acid. 
That water may also exist in immediate combination with 
acids, without being resolved into its elements, is sufficiently 
possible; and it probably is in this state, in those cases, in 
which there are no indications of an intimate combination, or 
definite proportion. It may then be considered as in solution 
similar to that in which it holds salts dissolved, or, what is a 
closer analogy, similar to that in which it holds dissolved the 
vegetable acids, which are admitted to be ternary compounds 
-of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. The opposite view applies 
only to that portion of water considered as essential to the 
body in an insulated state, and in which it is combined in a de- 
finite proportion, observing in its relations, or the relations of 
its elements, equivalent proportions to other bodies. 
In the last place, Considering this opinion in relation to the 
_ two opposite views which have been maintained with regard to 
the constitution of oxymuriatic and muriatic acids, while it has 
all the evidence in its favour from which the existence of wa- 
ter in muriatic acid gas is inferred, and all the analogies by 
which this is confirmed ; it has the support which the doctrine 
of the undecompounded nature of chlorine derives from the re- 
Ss2 lations 
