OE EEE 
1815.] Scientific Intelligence. 233 
so sparing of their pens as to omit the short syllable which would 
give the word its true meaning : profo is intelligible : the other may 
be taken for the Latin word pro. In another respect, lhowever, the 
term is objectionable ; for even if written profosulphate, it would 
seem to denote a subsulphate, though it is meant to stand for sul- 
hate of protoxide.. A regular use of the modern self-explanatory 
nomenclature is extremely useful: a careless use of it renders the 
terms worse than arbitrary. : 
Are you aware that the word complement has sometimes the word 
compliment substituted for it in the dnnals: also the word radicle, 
for radical,?; It would puzzle a botanist to find radicle applied to 
muriatic acid; though radical, an adjective, used substantively, 
would at once be understood to mean the radical base. 
Your obedient servant, 
SPECULATOR, 
If my Correspondent pay the requisite attention to the present 
fondness for zew words, hy which chemists and mineralogists in 
general are actuated, he will speedily be convinced that any remon- 
strance on my part would have little effect in stemming the current. 
The terms prosulphate, persulphate, &e. do not strike me as so 
objectionable as they do my Correspondent. It is now well known 
that in a great variety of cases more than one oxide of the same 
metal is capable of combining with acids. Tius both the black and 
the réd oxide of iron combine with sulphuric acid. It is necessary 
to distinguish each of these salts by a mame; and no mode seems 
simpler or more natural than to prefix to the old name of the salt 
the first syllable of the respective names of the oxides. If the black 
oxide of iron be called protoxide, then the combination of it with 
sulphuric acid may be known, without ambiguity, by taking its first 
syllable pro and prefixing it to sulphate of iron. Prosulphate of iron 
means a compound of sulphuric acid and protoxide of iron. Proto- 
sulphate of iron 1 think more objectionable, because proéo is not the 
first syllable of the word protoxide. In like manner, the persulphate 
of tron means a combination of sulphuric acid with the peroxide or 
red oxide of iron. When various proportions of an acid combine 
with a base, it is now known that these proportions follow a very 
simple Jaw. If we suppose the quantity of base fixed, then the 
quantities of acid in the super salts are multiples of the quantity in 
the neutral salt; namely, double or quadruple. Thus in sulphate 
of potash, if we denote the base by a, and the acid by J, the com- 
position of supersulphate of potash will be a + 2b. Whatis called 
subcarbonate of potash is composed of a + U (a being the base, J 
the acid), and the crystallized carbonate of a + 21. Hence we 
have a simple mode of distinguishing these salts. Let the salt com- 
posed of a + b be simply designated by the old name, as sulphate 
of potash, carbonate of potash: let the salt composed of a + 2 U 
be distinguished by prefixing the syllable dis, or Li, or bin; thus 
bisulphate, bicarbonate, binoxalate. “By using Latin terms for such 
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