260 Existence of Radicals in the Amphide Salts disproved. 
93. Would not a more comprehensive and correct idea be pre- 
sented by the following language :— 
94. From any combination of an acid with a base, either the 
base or its radical may be replaced by any other radical or base, 
between which and the other elements present, there is a higher 
affinity. Of course from acids called hydrated, from their hold- 
ing an atom of basic water, either this base, or its radical (hydro- 
gen), may be replaced by any other competent base or radical. 
95. The premises being manifestly fallacious, still more so is 
the subsequent allegation, that in consequence of the hydrated 
acids being compounds formed with hydrogen, their capacity 
of saturation depends on the quantity of this element which can 
be replaced. 
96. Is not this an inversion of the obvious truth, that the quan- 
tity of hydrogen present is as the capacity of saturation; and 
that, of course, the quantity of any element which can be sub- 
stituted for it, must be in equivalent proportion? Would not a 
student, from this, take up two erroneous ideas—first, that the 
capacity of saturation is conferred by the radical, and in the next 
place, that of all radicals, hydrogen alone can give such a capa- 
city: Is it not plain, that the assertion here made by the cele- 
brated author, would be true of any radical ? 
97. Passing over a sentence which has no bearing on the topic 
under discussion, in the fourth allegation we have a reiteration 
* *# + 
hydrogen. In the year 1832 I proved this view to be incorrect, that 
all the properties of the compounds of hydrogen combined to show that it was 
an eminently electro-positive body, that it took place along with iron, manganese, 
and zinc. * * * These views have been still farther corroborated by the re- 
searches of Graham. * * * ‘There rests now no doubt, in the minds of phi- 
losophical chemists, that hydrogen is a metal enormously volatile.” 
This justifies the following language held in my letter on the Berzelian nomen- 
clature. 
“T am of opinion that the employment of the word hydracid, as co-ordinate 
with oxacid, must tend to convey the erroneous idea, with which, in opposition 
to his own definition, the author seems to have been imbued, that hydrogen 
in the one class, plays the same part as oxygen in the other. But in reality, 
the former is eminently a combustible, and of course the radical, by his own defi- 
nition.’ 
So entirely have I concurred in considering hydrogen as an aériform metal, that, 
for more than twenty years, I have, in my lectures, accounted for the amalgama- 
tion of mercury when electrolyzed in contact with sal ammoniac, by inferring am- 
monia to be a gaseous alloy of two metallic ingredients, hydrogen and nitrogen 
being both aériform metals. 
