xvil MOLECULAR ARCHITECTURE 401 



beginning of the day. . .) or Orthrin (from opOpbs, dawn of 

 the morning) " (loc. cit. p. 285). 



As in the case of the ammonium radical, which he had 

 represented by the symbol Am, Berzelius proposed to repre- 

 sent the benzoyl radical by a single symbol, Bz, thus 



Oil of bitter almonds = BzH 

 Benzoyl chloride = BzCl, etc. 



He also proposed to describe by the name AMIDE the 

 compound radical NH 2 , which is formed by removing an 

 atom of hydrogen from ammonia as in 



C 7 H 5 ONH 2 = Benzamide, 



K'NH 2 = Potassamide, 



Na'NH 2 = Sodamide. 



The structure of alcohol and ether. Dumas and 

 Boullay (1827) on the aetherin radical. The action of 

 sulphuric acid on alcohol had long been known to give rise 

 on one hand to olefiant gas (Chap. VIII, p. 155), and on 

 the other hand to a volatile, inflammable liquid, which was 

 generally described as " sulphuric ether," but is now known 

 simply as "ether." Gay-Lussac in 1815 (Ann. de Chimie, 

 JL&LS, 95, 311-318), by measuring the vapour-densities of 

 alcohol and of ether, showed that their composition might 

 be represented as follows : 



Alcohol = Olefiant Gas + Water-vapour 

 i vol. i vol. i vol. 



Ether = Olefiant Gas + Water-vapour 



I Vol. 2 Voh. I Vol. 



In an important memoir " On the Compound Ethers " * 

 (Ann. Chim. P/tys., 1828, 37, 15-53), Dumas and Boullay 

 showed further that the ethereal substances formed by the 

 action of acids on alcohol could all be represented as com- 



1 Read at the Paris Academy of Sciences on Dec. 24, 1827, and 

 published in the Memoires de F Institut, 1838 (!), 15, 457-494. 



D D 



