94 Gerhardi’s Organic Chemistry. 
C,H,; Berzelius as the bin-oxyd of C,H,, and Zeise as a hy- 
druret of C,H,O,. The inconvenience of this system arises not 
only from the fact that the radicals are hypothetical, but that 
their very existence in the compounds is alternately claimed and 
denied, and the elements are arrangeé and re-arranged like the 
letters in an anagram, as the case may require. M. Liebig seems 
to have felt its deficiencies, for after describing in the first vol- 
ume of his Traité, a number of bodies as derivatives of compound 
radicals, in the succeeding portions of the work he returns to the 
old divisions of acids, alkalies, essential oils, etc. 
his mode of viewing organic compounds resulted from the 
idea of dualism in chemical compositions, which had found advo- 
cates in the great majority of chemists since the days of Lavoisier, 
and has been perpetuated by the received system of nomenclature. 
And although there have been at different times those who have 
seen the difficulties of the binary system, it is only within a few 
years that a different philosophy has gained partisans.* This 
new system is distinguished as that of the French school, and 
ranks among its adherents the most distinguished chemists of 
France. It rejects entirely the idea of a binary arrangement in 
the composition of bodies, and regards their atoms as constituting 
a system, in which one or more molecules may be exchanged for 
others without altering the chemical constitutiory or type of the 
arrangement. 
M. Gerhardt, who has been long known as one of the most 
distinguished chemists of France, has attempted the task of sys 
tematizing the great accumulation of facts which organic chem- 
istry presents, and framing a classification that shall embrace all 
among which is succinic acid, which exists in amber. 42 
products are less complex in their constitution than the original 
substances ; sugar by the action of oxydizing agents yields, be- 
sides formic acid, carbonic acid gas and water, and wax whe 
converted into succinic acid, undergoes a similar decomposition. 
RAG atte torn 
* Mr. J. D. Whelpley attempted some years since, to show from the electro- 
chemical decomposition of the metallic salts of the mineral acids, that they must 
be ot as binary compounds of an acid with an oxyd, but as ternary phe 
binations of the metal, oxygen, and the other element. This principle was made 
by him the basis of a beautiful and ingenious classification of all saline compounds. 
