On Chemical Nomenclature. 267 
amphigen class; which incongruity is, in his opinion, a sufficient 
reason for not considering them as simple salts, and their ingredients 
as acids and bases, agreeably to the opinions of De Bondsdorff and 
myself. 
Berzelius errs in confounding my opinions with those of De Bons- 
orff. However I may have admired the sagacity with which that 
chemist investigated the pretensions of some haloid salts to certain 
attributes of acidity or alkalinity ; in my letter on the Berzelian no- 
menclature, I signified my unwillingness to rest my opinions upon a 
basis so narrow, as that which he had endeavored to establish. I 
stated that I did not deem it necessary to appeal to his excellent ob- 
servations, proving certain attributes of acidity to exist in one case, 
those of alkalinity in the other. I alleged my definition to be foun- 
ded on the conviction that the property of affecting vegetable colors, 
on which that sagacious chemist lays so much stress, has not latterly, 
been deemed necessary in acids; and that in bases never was requir- 
ed. As respects them, it only served as a mean of subdivision be- 
tween alkaline oxides and other oxibases. 
I am at a loss to discover in what part of my letter there was any 
language which could convey the erroneous impression, that, in de- 
fining acids and bases I proposed to overlook properties, and to be 
regulated by attention to the number of atoms ina compound. Cer- 
tainly nothing was more foreign to my thoughts. 
It is assumed by Berzelius that the saturation of the fluobase of 
potassium by fluohydric acid, cannot be considered as analogous to 
the saturation of the oxybase of potassium by sulphuric acid ; be- 
cause the resulting compound is to the taste, in one case acti 
in the other sour. In reply I suggested that if the salidity of the bi- 
borates and bicarbonates was not to be questioned on account of their 
alkaline taste, nor that of the protochloride of tin on account of its 
sourness, it was not consistent that the pretensions to salidity of the 
fluohydrate of the Aluobase of potassium should be denied on account 
of its sour taste. I will now add that if the fluosilicate of potassium 
be a double salt, the fluoride of silicon one of its two constituents 
must be a simple salt, and yet it is sour. If a simple salt may be 
sour, why may not a double salt have this attribute ; and how in fact 
can its presence be inconsistent with salidity? Is not the absence of 
this characteristic in silica and tannin, and many other acids, as much 
against their claims to acidity, as its presence in other compounds is 
an objection to their association with saline bodies. It is considered 
