196 T.S. Hunt on the Relations of Water and Hydrogen. 
which may be described as amidized species of them, and are 
equally susceptible of substitutions by chlorine.” It was also re- 
marked that ‘“‘as many neutral oxygenized compounds, which do 
not possess the saline character, are still derivatives of acids which 
are referable to the type H:O2, we may regard all oxygenized 
bodies as belonging to this type.” ‘ While nitric acid is N HOs, 
or (NO2,H)O, the result of the complete replacement of H by NOs 
will be (NO: )2O, or the unknown dry nitric acid, homologue of 
the so-called anhydrous phosphoric and arsenic acids, which are 
equally (PO2)2O, ete.” Vol. viii, p. 92. 
ne of the objects proposed in the essay just quoted, was a 
comparison of the views of Gerhardt and Liebig with regard to 
the formation of ethers, amids, aud allied bodies. Gerhardt in 
accordance with the electro-chemical theory of Berzelins, had 
considered the acids in these reactions to be electro-negative by 
their oxygen, while the alcohols, ammonia, and the hydrocar- 
bons were electro-positive by their hydrogen, so that these bodies 
minus H2, replaced O2 in the acid.* To this view we objected 
that it leaves unexplained that change in the basic relations of 
the acid, which Liebig rightly understood when he compared the 
ethers to salts, and represented the acid as losing H, which is re 
placed by the elements of the alcohol minus HOz. This theory, 
unlike that of Gerhardt, made the ethers of the hydracids enter 
into the same class with those of the oxacids; at the same time 
it did not include those bodies which are produced with the elim- 
ination of H»Qz, by the action of oxygen acids upon ammonia 
, 
>} 
In this Journal for March, 1848, (vol. v, p. 265,) we observed 
tha 
of water to hydrocyanie acid, and that water differs from oe 
" ; tne 
nds 
eC wit HAAS, 
C2Ha., (Me H) which Frankland calls hydrids of ethyl and me- 
thyl, as well as of his zineo-methyl C2Hs, Zn. The bodies 
which he regards as the alcohol radicals are still homologues.of 
* Précis de Chimie Organique, tom. ii, p. 495. # 
