ON CHEMICAL NOMENCLATURE. 41 



to it from time to time, such as that of Thomson, 1 who distinguished the 

 different metallic oxides as protoxides, deutoxides, &c. 



Berzelius 2 made a more exact classification of salts, and added some 

 new forms of names. He laid down the rule that the names of the 

 simplest compounds should be formed by adding to the name of the one 

 element the termination ' -ide ' or ' -ure ; ' to that of the other, the termi- 

 nation • -eux ' or ' -ique,' with the further provision that the more 

 electro-negative of the two constituents should have the substantive form. 

 Instead of the terms protoxide, &c, he adds the terminations ' -ous ' and 

 ' -ic ' to the name of the other constituent — e.g. ferrous oxide. Among 

 the compounds of elements with oxygen he separated the compounds 

 with electro-negative elements — the acids — from the other oxides, with- 

 out thereby implying the existence of any fundamental difference between 

 them. The halogen compounds of hydrogen he calls hydracids. In the 

 investigation of salts he was the first who made clearer distinction 

 between neutral, acid, and basic salts ; instead of these terms he used the 

 terms supersalts and subsalts. 



From time to time systems of chemical nomenclature have been pro- 

 posed which entirely discard the arbitrary names given even to the best 

 known substances, and introduce artificial words, each of whose vowels 

 or consonants means either a substance or a number. Thus Gmelin 3 pro- 

 poses a system in which the different vowels and diphthongs represent the 

 numbers from 1 to 9, and the elements are described by monosyllables 

 with the vowel a, thus: — K = Pate, Mn = Ganne, &c. In combining 

 the names of the elements the vowel is altered according to the number of 

 atoms of the element to be denoted. Thus, if O = Ane, and Fe = Mart, 

 then Fe. 3 3 = Mertin, and Fe 3 4 = Mirton. Laurent attempted a system 

 of the same sort but found it unworkable. For organic substances New- 

 lands 4 has devised a series of names, some of which might be useful. 



Laurent 5 enters into an elaborate comparison of the qualities of the 

 compounds of hydrogen, zinc, gold, silver, and platinum, and shows 

 that in respect of crystalline structure, behaviour on heating, and power 

 of entering into chemical combinations the corresponding compounds 

 of hydrogen and zinc — i.e. the hydrogen salts and the zinc salts — show 

 a closer analogy with each other than the zinc salt does with those of 

 the other metals. He concludes that if hydrogen were not gaseous and 

 its oxide were not volatile, no one would hesitate to place it among 

 the metals. He therefore looks on the acids as belonging to the same 

 chemical type as their salts, as being, in fact, hydrogen salts. Laurent 

 proceeds further to show that there is no essential distinction to be drawn 

 between acids and salts and oxides. The differences between hydrogen 

 and other metallic salts are as a rule not greater than the differences 

 between the salts of two such metals as platinum and potassium, or two 

 such bodies as a chloride and a carbonate. The reactions of the hydrogen 

 salts are not always more energetic than those of the other metallic 

 salts : thus, sulphate of hydrogen attacks metallic oxides just as the 

 sulphates of gold and platinum do. The distinction which has been made 

 between them is due to the non-metallic appearance of hydrogen, and the 



1 System of Chemistry, ed. 1804, 1807, 1810, &c. 



a Journal dc Physique, vol. lxxxiii. p. 253 : also in Lehtrvcli der Ckemie. 



3 Handbook, vol. vii. p. 149. 



4 Chem. News, 1861. 



4 Metliode de Chemie. 



