CHAP. XVIII. 



OF THE COMPOSITION OF THE SALTS. 



IT was an opinion advanced long ago by Went- 

 zel, that it was only necessary to determine 

 what we at present call the atomic weight of the 

 acids and bases, which constitute the salts, in 

 order to be able to draw up tables exhibiting 

 the constituents of all of them, without being at 

 the trouble to subject them to a chemical analy- 

 sis. Berzelius has followed up this idea ; and 



* . tables of 



after determining the atomic weights or the salts, 

 acids and bases by a very careful analysis of a 

 certain number of salts, he drew up a complete 

 set of tables, exhibiting the proportion of acid 

 and base contained in all the known salts. But 

 such tables, even supposing the atomic weights 

 on which they are founded to be perfectly exact, 

 can be of little utility to chemists; for they 

 contain no new information whatever. They 

 merely state the known ratio between the acid 

 and base in numbers different from those at- 

 tached to these bodies, and representing their 

 atomic weights. Now, when we have occasion 

 to use these ratios for calculating the result of a 

 chemical experiment, it is in general much easier 



