i 



^40 iiEi'0UT~1884. 



to bo preferred to the other iianio in voj^no at tliat time — viz., ' liquonr 

 alkaline satureo do la niatioro coloranto du bleu do Prusse.' 



"J,, The name should bo as far as possible in real cornispondcnce with 

 the object. As corollaries to this rule ho lays down that whore a name is 

 made up of an adjective and a substantive the more essential and unalter- 

 able constituent should bear the substantive form ; also that the names of 

 discoverers, since they stand in no essential connection with the bodies 

 they discover, should find no i)]ace in the system. 



3. If the constitution of a body is unknown, it is better to give it a 

 name which convoys no moanintjf, than ono which convoys a wrong one. 

 Hence ho prefers to call the body of unknown composition which we now 

 know as potassium ferrocyanide, 'alkali Prussien,' rather than 'alkali 

 phlogistiquo.' 



4. In the choice of new names it is advisable to derive them from 

 roots in the best-known dead languages. 



>). Names must bo adapted to the structure and natui'o of tho difTerent | 



languages in which they are to bo used. 



De Morveau ap])lios these principles to the nomenclature of 474 sub- 

 stances, belonging to tho four classes, earths, alkalies, acids, and metals, 

 and the products of their union. In tho naming of salts he forms words 

 for all tho acids known to him, on the analogy of tho terms vitriol and 

 iiKn introduced by ^Macqner, so that the salts I3aSo.„ CaClj, acetate of 

 iron, are called respectively vitriol barotique, muriate calcaire, and acoto 

 martial. He also tries to hx one /lame lor carbonic acid gas, and calls it 

 acido mcphitique, and its salts mcphites. The principal advance which wo 

 find in Do Morveau i.'?. tlien, that acids receive names with uniform 

 terminations, and salts receive names indicating their being compo8ition& 

 from acid and base. 



In 1787 Lavoisier and Do ]\Iorvcau,' with the assistance of Berthollet 

 and Fourcroy, prepared and laid before tho French Academy a scheme of 

 chemical nomenclature based on the dualistic hypothesis, and their 

 proposals form the basis of the nomenclature still in use. A system of 

 nomenclature is necessarily bound up with a classification of known 

 substances, and so we find that Morveau and Lavoisier give a table of all 

 the substances to which they assign definite names arranged according to 

 their relationships ono with another. The elements retain their ac- 

 customed names, except that the names oxygen, hydrogen, and azote are 

 introduced. The term oxide is introduced for the first time, and oxides 

 are looked on as substances in a state intermediate between the element 

 and its acid. Thus tiiey call the two oxides of arsenic oxide d'arsenic 

 (white arsenic) and acid arsenique; and tho two known oxides of 

 molybdenum, oxide de molybdene and acide molybdique. The corre- 

 spondence of the terminations '-ate ' and '-ic,' '-ite ' and '-ou3 ' in acids and 

 salts is introduced for the first time. Tho nomenclature of salts thus 

 came to be nearly identical with that now used. In this classification tho 

 French chemists do not distinguish by generic names between higher and 

 lower basic oxides. 



The views thus developed by Lavoisier and Morveau found acceptance 

 all over Europe. Girrtanncr translated the French names into German, 

 and several English chemists, such as Dickson and Kirwan, Chevenix and 

 Thomson,* adopted the system in its main outlines. Additions Avere made 



' Compt. liend., translated by George Pearson, M.D. 1794 ; 2nd ed. 1793. 



'^ System of Chi'mistry, ci\. 1^02. , 4 



