1819.] Acids, Alkalies, and their Compounds. 291 



proportions, but almost exactly in the mean proportion between 

 the first and second. Its hydrogen is nearly in the first propor- 

 tion of that element to carbon. 



Succinic acid is carbon with oxygen in the second proportion,, 

 that constituting carbonic oxide. The hydrogen conforms to 

 none of the four proportions, but is the precise mean between the 

 first and second. 



In saccho-lactic acid the relation of the oxygen to the carbon 

 is not that of any of the definite proportions, but is nighest to 

 the third. The hydrogen is that which constitutes supercarbu- 

 retted hydrogen. 



The analysis of benzoic acid is evidently very doubtful, owing- 

 to the difficulties which attend it from its volatility. It is the 

 only one in which the proportion of oxygen to carbon is less even 

 than the lowest of the definite proportions of these elements. 

 The proportion of hydrogen is almost exactly that of the first 

 proportion. 



If the definite proportions of oxygen and hydrogen to carbon 

 be assumed to be more numerous than four, but still observing 

 the law of simple multiples, all these results may be easily 

 brought under the law. The relations suggested by these 

 researches, and particularly those which prove that proportions 

 of carbon both to oxygen and to hydrogen exist inferior to the 

 lowest known proportions of these elements, afford much support 

 to the conclusion, that their definite combinations are more 

 numerous than the few that have been admitted, either on the 

 doctrine of equivalents, or on the atomic hypothesis. And on 

 the latter, the composition of organic compounds may be 

 accounted for with this conclusion, so as to preserve what con- 

 stitutes its chief excellence — the principle that one body in a 

 combination is always in the relation of one atom, and which is 

 ■confessedly incapable of being maintained, with the assumption 

 merely of the few definite proportions of the elements that have 

 hitherto been assigned. 



The view indeed that the vegetable acids are compounds of 

 a simple radical (carbon) acidified by oxygen and hydrogen, and 

 the law existing in this and other ternary combinations, that two 

 of the elements observe the requisite relations in proportion to 

 the third as a base, may probably be extended to all the vegeta- 

 ble, and, perhaps, even to the more complicated animal products ; 

 and, with the admission of a more extensive series of definite 

 proportions in the primary elements, may remove the necessity 

 of the law advanced by Berzelius, and apparently now admitted 

 by the supporters of the atomic system, that while in inorganic 

 bodies one of the constituents is always in the state of a single 

 atom, in organic bodies it is not so, but very often the reverse* 

 If this law be excluded, and the reverse established, it wifjl 

 assimilate the constitution of organic to that of inorganic co.ni- 



t2 



