T. S. Hunt on Chemical Classifications. 403 



containing certain hypothetical bodies, which differ from the 

 acids by the elements HO combined with amidogen NH 2 ; thus 

 benzamid is the amidid of benzoyle and acetamid will be the 

 amidid of the deutoxyd of acetyle, which is only assimilated to 

 acetic acid through the imaginary radical acetyle; 



M. Dumas has recently observed that acetate of ammonia by 

 the action of anhydrous phosphoric acid, loses the elements of 

 two atoms of water and yields a new compound which has been 

 called acetonitrile, and which may be directly derived from aceta- 

 mid by the loss of H 2 0; its formula is consequently C ? H 3 N. 

 The subsequent researches of Dumas, Malaguti and Schlieper, 

 and the previous ones of Fehling, have shown that a large num- 

 ber of acids yield compounds similar to acetonitrile. These bod- 

 ies which have received the generic appellation of nitrites, like the 

 corresponding amids, regenerate ammonia and the parent acid by 

 the action of alkalies and acids. If in accordance with this re- 

 action, we attempt to refer acetonitrile to acetic acid, we have 

 H / = N-0 2 ; or if we adopt M. Liebig's view, it is a nitruret of 

 acetyle ; and while according to M. Gerhardt, acetamid may be 

 represented as acetic acid in which NH replaces O, in acetonitrile 

 the equivalent of 2 is N - H. The author of the Precis hence 

 regards this and similar compounds as amids of the anhydrids of 

 the acids and designates them anhydrid amids, 



M. Fehling in studying the action of potassium upon succinic 

 ether, has made known an anhydrid ether, comparable with the 





anhydrid amids. His alcosuccinal (C 6 H 3 O n ) is sucemo-vinic 

 acid minus H 3 0, and contains the elements of succinic acid and 

 one equivalent of alcohol minus 2H 2 0. It will probably be a 

 monobasic acid, since succinidam, the corresponding amid, which 

 is the anhydrid of succinamic (homologue of oxamic) acid, is 

 capable of exchanging an equivalent of its water for lead or bari- 

 um. It is impossible, according to either of the received hypothe- 



I ses, to represent this as an ether of succinic acid; agreeably to 



the received views it must be regarded as the ether of succinid, a 

 substance which exhibits none of the characters of an acid. 



The theory of M. Liebig which explains so satisfactorily the 

 formation of ordinary ethers, is no longer eligible when applied 

 to the amids; in fact the formation of ammoniacal salts by the 

 action of acids upon the hypothetical oxyd of ammonium, is the 



I only reaction which in his view can be regarded as a parallel to 



the formation of ethers. At the same tune the existence of such 

 bodies as the ame thanes of Dumas, which by the assimilation of 

 two equivalents of water are converted into a bibasic acid with 

 one equivalent of ammonia and one of alcohol, besides the analo- 

 gies already noticed, point out too plainly to be mistaken, a rela- 

 tion between ethers and amids which his system does not express. 



We are obliged to admit that as one is directly derived from alco- 



hol and an acid, by the abstraction of H 2 7 the other contains 



