Sept. 22, j88i] 



NA TURE 



49: 



formation of names, as in tlieir o\ni science of chemistry. The 

 practice of stating in a name as briefly as possible certain facts, 

 and as a rule important facts, fiad been, as every chemist l<new, 

 the chief object of their nomenclature. But he thought he 

 might be permitted to say that if one looked to the composition 

 of any result like the present nomenclature of chemistry — which 

 had been guided by intellectual principles — it was of immense 

 importance to consider its purely intellectual principles, viz., the 

 principles of convenience, and perhaps even of popular tastes, 

 and, if he might be albwed to imagine tuch a thing, even the 

 prejudices which occasionally arose among a gi'eat number of 

 men who adopted any particular form of expression. He pro- 

 posed to refer to the question from the different points of view. 

 If they had occasion to consider, without knowing anything 

 about it, what \vas the most important condition to which eveiy 

 name ought to conform, he fancied there would be no two 

 opinions on the matter. The first and most important condition 

 and requirement of every name of a thing that was important 

 was that it should call to the minds of those who used it, with- 

 out ambiiuity, some one particular thing or one particular idea. 

 He should be inclined to consider a code of laws by which their 

 action would be rendered uniform with regard to name-, and 

 which would e>tabli-h such fundamental principles that an 

 absence of ambiguity would be secured. The more any 

 name could be defined and shortened the better it would 

 be for chemistry. In the modern progress of chemistry, 

 especially in that department of which the growth had 

 been enormously great — ^lie meant the many carljon com- 

 pounds — the purpose of obtaining clearness and avoiding am- 

 biguity in the nomenclature had been, with kw exceptions, 

 satisfactorily attained. But he thought members would agree 

 with him ihat in the names given to some compounds more com- 

 plex than others the chief object of c mvenience had mt been 

 attained to an equal exten". They found names given which, 

 when carefully considered by chemists, told a story, liut a very 

 long story, and in a manner which was really free from am- 

 biguity, but only by aid of a great number of syllables, and a 

 compound word of inconvenient length was this attained. On 

 the other hand, amongst very common substances that sj stematic 

 process had been, he thought, to a con-iderably le-s degree 

 adopted. The elder naxes of commoner sub>tances, ?uch as 

 salts, were to a gi'eat extent based upon facts which were 

 true, but were by no means the only facts to be recalled. 

 Of course every chemi-t knew the great number of names 

 that were in common use, and how far they served to recall 

 a particular process, but only one auong many jiroccsses by 

 which the substance could be formed. On the other hand, 

 many names had grown up from bodies which were purely em- 

 pirical — names w hich did not recall any particular properties, but 

 served with great convenience and without ambiguity to indicale 

 the body. If they looked to the circumstance-^ which aflected 

 that one condition which he had submitted a^ esfenlial to names 

 being perfectly free from ambiguity, there was perhaps hardly one 

 condition more practically important than this, ihat there should 

 l)e in the names as little change as po-silile, and more especially 

 was this the case when a name that had once been given had come 

 to be need in rela'.ion to particular substances. It was within the 

 memory of chemists that changes of name had taken place not 

 only -w-hen a particular substance was recalled, but there were 

 also a considerable number of cases showing that the name given 

 at one time to one body was afterwards given to another. The 

 circumstances attending such changes were in some instances of 

 an exceedingly reasonatle kind, and well worthy of consideration 

 after it was found that there w ere grounds for believing that the 

 names belonged more properly to other substances. If, however, 

 changes introduced cmfusion, they were necessarily injurious to 

 the progress of the science. When he looked back to the suc- 

 cessive steps by which their knowledge had risen to its present 

 position, and to the ideas that had succeeded one another, he 

 felt that in order to really understand chemistry, and to be able 

 to arrange the facts in a convenient order, they must see how 

 they had grow n up. If that was important in practical matters, 

 it was even more important in what he might call tlie scientific 

 work. He ventured to think, at all events he had always felt, 

 that to use with safety any idea that they were accustomed to 

 use, it was ahno-t essential, and was certainly of importance, 

 that they should endeavour to trace the origin and gi-owth of that 

 idea, so as to see what it really meant. His object in bringing 

 the subject before the Section was to obtain from his colleagues 

 and friends their views on the present state of matters, and to 



give them the oppartanity of considermg together — those who 

 more especially felt it their duty to contribute by any means in their 

 pow er to the advancement of science eithei- in guiding the opera- 

 tions or grow th of those names — whether there could not be greater 

 concert among chemists as to what was being and what had been 

 done, so that they might conform their doings to certain laws. 

 He had frequently seen with regret some features in chemical 

 nomenclature that had been springing up of late years. He had 

 seen some habits gaining ground which appeared to be at 

 variance with the best principles of nomenclature — he would 

 assume such to be the case. But there w ere laws in the growth 

 of those words, and he could not doubt for his own part that if 

 chemists came to recognise those law s, or rid themselves of them, 

 the future growth of words would gradually come to be a more 

 systematic guide. It had sometime^ been felt that to attempt to 

 solve the problem would be aseless, and that irregularities had 

 become so prevalent that it would be hopeless to think they 

 could ever remedy them. But he thought dift'erently, and would 

 lu-ge that in the direction he had pointed out they were only now- 

 beginning to move. There was only one convenient division 

 among names. That division, of course, was not absolute, 

 because no such division could be absolate ; but the great majo- 

 rity of names were used to denote things and ideas. Some 

 nares were of little use in relation to the particular ideas, 

 and therefore it seemed to him that the best way to 

 obtain a name was as the result of experiment. If founded on 

 that principle lliere could be no ambiguity. At the present 

 time, as their views had con-iderably changed, and as they had 

 not attained finality in their operations, there was much to be 

 learnt, and it was reasonable to suppo^ e that if they adopted a 

 particular name to indicate a particular thing it might perhaps 

 turn out at some time hence an error ujion whidi people would 

 look back as liistorical. With regard to names, especially 

 theories there were some of them that had certainly served 

 important purposes. It was then really essential to the arrange- 

 ment of their ideas that they should for the time imagine some- 

 thing to exist, and that they should recall by some convenieiit 

 name that which they asmmed or imagined. Names, in his 

 opinion, ought to express ideas ; but there were many names 

 introduced which he thought w ere used for no better purpose 

 than to express the absence of ideas. It often happened that 

 when exploring any particular part of a field, they got a rational 

 clue which led them clearly and well for a certain way ; and 

 they failed to follow it further. The c.rses were numberless, 

 but one of the most important was that of chemical combinaUon 

 itself. Complex bodies were far more numerous than the few- 

 simple bodies with which they had to do, and while in the 

 habit of using the term chemical combination, they had con- 

 cealed their ignorance of the state of combination. Others 

 used the term molecular combination, and there again 

 thev concealed their ignorance of the bodies to which it 

 was api^lied. Among the present anomalie; in names there was 

 one which he ventured to submit to the consideration of the 

 Section, and which hid grown up to soiie extent of late, and 

 that was the replacing of empiricil names of things bynames, 

 which, while he would call them rati.Mial, because they served 

 to recall intelligibly and without ambiguity, sei-ved to recall 

 the number of atoms. He menlirned such cases by way 

 of ilUustrating the ractice which had seemed to him to be 

 gaining ground of late years, for the ) urpose, as some said, of 

 incre.-ising the clearne-s'of ; tateraent. He had no doubt that the 

 words were framed for the jiurpose of conveying to the niind 

 something useful to know, and as nin:es formed on that principle 

 had been"found to be bas»d on those superseded by others, he 

 thought when they came to such names as indicated molecular 

 composition it was better to avoid them, because, as he had 

 said, they had rot arrived at finality. The chemists of fifiy years 

 ago were a? confident as chemists of the present day in the 

 matter of nomenclature; and therefire the more they could 

 obtain names without ambiguity and without liability to change 

 in the future, the more probable was it that such names would 

 stand and continue to be used. A cro vd of material presented 

 it^'elf iust then to his mind, but he did mt think it wjuld 

 be well to trouble the Section with further remarks. He merely 

 wished to thr. w out the ball for his colleagues to deal with. 



Cellidose and Ccal, by C. F. Cross B.Sc, and E. J. Bevan. 

 — This is a continuation of the authors' researches on bast fibre 

 (Chem Soc. Jotini., 18S0, abstr. 656). By the action of 

 sulphuric acid {sp. gr. 1-65), at 70°, on jute fibre, an insoluble, 

 black, spongy substance has been obtained ; that the cellulose 



