260 Existence of Radicals in the Amphide Salts disproved. 
_ 93. Would not a more comprehensive and correct idea be pre- 
sented by the following language ?— 
94. From any combination of an acid with a base, either the 
base or its radical may be replaced by any other radical or base, 
between which and the other elements present, there is a higher 
affinity. Of course from acids called hydrated, from their hold- 
ing an atom of basic water, either this base, or its radical (hydro- 
gen), may be replaced by any other competent base or radical. _ 
- 95. The premises being manifestly fallacious, still more so is 
the subsequent allegation, that in consequence of the hydrated 
acids being compounds formed with hydrogen, their capacity 
of saturation os on the: quantity a this element which can 
Pees Pe dae Bas 
#& 96. Is not hina ion of the obvious truth that the quan- 
tity of hydrogen present is as ‘the capacity of ‘saturation ; and 
that, of course, the quantity of any element which can be sub- 
stituted for it, must be in equivalent proportion? Would not a 
student, from this, take up two erroneous ideas—first, that the 
capacity of saturation is conferred by the radical, and in the next 
place, that of all radicals, hydrogen alone can give such a capa- 
city? . Is it not plain, that the assertion here made by the re 
brated author, would be true of any radical ? 
97. Passing over a sentence which has no bearing on the tone 
under discussion, in the eth eaponys have a reiteration 
hydrogen. * * * In the year 1832 I proved this view to be incorrect, that 
all the properties of the compounds of hydrogen combined to show that it was 
an eminently pectro pare body, that it took place’ along with iron, manganese, 
and zine. * These jews have been still farther somroboratea by the re- 
searches of Graham. * * There rests now. no doubt, n the minds of phi- 
losophical chemists, that rasa is a metal enormously mF ile.” 
soa justifies the following feneenge, held in my letter on the Berzelian ‘nomen: 
' “Tam of opinion that the employment of the word hydracid, as tea 
with oxacid, must tend to convey the erroneous idea, with which, i n opposition 
to his own definition, the author seems to have been imbued, Laie hydrogen 
in the one class, plays the same part as oxygen in the other. But in reality, 
the formas, i is eminently a combustible, and of course the radical, by his awry defi- 
nition 
So entirely have I concurred in considering hydrogen as an aériform nase that, 
for more than twenty years, I have, in my lectures, accounted for the amalgam@ 
cae of ale when ‘aoa in contact with sal ammoniac, by inferring am 
‘™monia to be a gaseous alloy of io motaltia — nts, hydrogen and ninoge 
being both aériform metals. 
