178 AMIDOGEN AND AMIDES THEORY OF THE ETHERS. 



by the remarkable and apparently peculiar aptitude of mercury 

 to combine with amidogen, and by the position which hydrogen 

 holds among elementary bodies, which is that of a metal of the 

 magnesian class. It is, that the light ammoniacal amalgam is 

 an amalgam of hydrogen, with the amide of mercury, or perhaps 

 a double amide of mercury and chloride of sodium, diffused 

 through it. The reaction by which these bodies may be pro- 

 duced, is explained in the following diagram : 



Before decomposition. After decomposition. 



! Mercury. . Amalgam of hydrogen 



Mercury. . _ /L. Amide of mercury 



Mercury. _X- 7 / Amalgam of hydrogen 

 Sodium. 



f Hydrogen. 



Hydrochlorate ) Amidogen 

 of Ammonia. ^ Hydrogen 



( Chlorine. . Chloride of sodium. 



Theory of the Ethers. As the ideas of chemists respecting 

 salt-radicals first derived from certain simple bodies, such as 

 chlorine, were afterwards extended through cyanogen, which 

 so closely resembles them, to compound salt-radicals of greater 

 complexity, so their ideas of basyles derived from the simple 

 metals, have been extended through ammonium, which exhi- 

 bits an absolute parallelism to potassium, to other compound 

 basyles, the oxides and salts of which exhibit a less obvious 

 relation to their metallic prototypes. In the theory of ether, 

 first suggested by Berzelius, which was powerfully advocated 

 by Liebig, and is now generally acquiesced in by chemists, that 

 body is represented as the oxide of a basyle named ethyle, or as 

 C 4 H 5 , O; and is considered itself a true base capable of 

 neutralizing acids, notwithstanding its want of alkalinity to 

 the taste, or as tried by test-paper, although it is sapid and 

 soluble in water. Alcohol, from the decomposition of whicli 

 ether is derived, is the hydrate of the oxide of ethyle, C 4 H 5 O, 

 HO ; nitrous ether is the nitrite of ether, C 4 H 5 O, NO 3 ; 

 oxalic ether, the oxalate of ether, C 4 H 5 O, C 2 O 3 ; and sulpho- 

 vinic acid may be called either the bisulphate of ether, or the 

 sulphate of water and ether, HO, SO 3 + C 4 H 5 O, SO 3 . Hy- 

 drochloric ether is the chloride of ethyle, C 4 H 5 , Cl. The 

 same views are extended to all the compounds of ether with 

 both oxygen arid hydrogen acids. 



