

1 



T. S. Hunt on Chemical Classifications. 401 



The same view is extended to the two oxalic amids, which are 

 the acid in which one and two equivalents of oxygen are re- 

 placed by the residue NH 3 —H 2 represented by Am, which is 

 the equivalent of O ; in the anil ides C tf H 7 N - H 3 — An, has 

 the same power. A difficulty however, arises in extending this 

 view of the constitution of ethers, for we find acids which con- 

 tain no oxygen and yet act with alcohol in the same manner as 

 an oxacid. Hydrochloric acid, CI H, forms with alcohol, an ether 

 with the elimination of an atom of water, precisely as acetic or 

 nitric monobasic oxygen acids, would do. Here the electro-neg- 

 ative theory, as just interpreted, is at fault, and hydrochloric ether 

 although resembling in all respects the ethers of the oxygen 

 acids is separated from the class and made a chlorinized species 

 of the carbo-hydrogen acetene G 9 H 



/ 



M. Gerhardt has extended this idea to all the copulate bodies 

 derived from the action of nitric and sulphuric acids upon hydro- 

 carbons, organic acids and neutral bodies, and in expressing by 

 formulas their composition, admits that SH 2 4 - = Su and 

 NH 3 — o =.Ni, are to be considered as equivalent to H 2 , while 

 C 2 H 6 - H 2 = Et, NH 3 - H 2 = Am, and C 6 H 6 - H 2 =Bz, are 

 equivalent to O. 



At the same time he announces the following law as regula- 

 ting the basic power of all these copulate compounds, "the basi- 

 city or capacity of saturation in a coupled body is always less 

 by unity than the sum of the basicities of the two bodies thus 

 united. }} Expressing by S the basic capacity of the coupled 

 body, and by X the sum of the basicities of its components, we 



have S**JB-l* 



M. Liebig on the other hand has seen the realization of the 

 j * electro-chemical theory of Berzelius, in the saline constitution, 



which agreeably to the dualistic notions of the day, includes the 

 idea of a base and an acid or a halogen body and a metal, (the two 

 being united in Liebig's new theory of salt-radicals.) He sees 

 in the ethers, compounds analogous to the salts, and in the ele- 

 ments of alcohol minus HO, something which in its chemical 

 relations, is similar to a metal and like it is capable of replacing 

 the equivalent of hydrogen upon which the basic power of acids 

 depends. Some of his School, however, still clinging to the idea 

 which recognizes combined water in the acids, choose to represent 

 the ethers as compounds of the so-called anhydrous acids with the 

 ox yd of the quasi-metal, but this view is still reducible to the prin- 

 ciple which is more easily expressed in accordance with the salt 

 radical theory. When nitric acid NH 3 acts upon alcohol, the 

 elements of an equivalent of water are set free, and nitric ether 

 C„ H J . NO , is formed, which is regarded as nitric acid in which 



* Precis de Chemie Organique, torn, i, p. 102. 

 Second Series, Vol. VII, No. 21.— May, 1849. 51 





