260 On Chemical Nomenclature. 



tions were amplified and corrected in obedience to more mature re- 

 flection. A printed copy of that letter having been sent by me to 

 Berzelius, I received in answer an epistle, of which I furnish you 

 with a translation. 



Since the period of that correspondence, so demonstrative of can- 

 dor and good feeling on the part of the great Swedish chemist, I 

 have published two editions of ray Compendium of Chemistry, in 

 which I have pursued a course corresponding with my criticisms 

 above alluded to. I am therefore desirous, in addition to the letter 

 of Berzelius to lay before the public a recapitulation, a review, and 

 an additional explanation of the grounds upon which I have ventured 

 to employ a language, and an arrangement inconsistent with the prac- 

 tice and opinions of a chemist by whose authority in other respects 

 I am usually influenced. But before proceeding wilh the ungra- 

 cious task of endeavoring to establish the correctness of my views 

 in opposition to those of my friend, I feel that it will be no more 

 than justice to repeat an acknowledgment, already made in my text 

 book, that if De BonsdoriF, myself, and others are right in consider- 

 ing the double salts of Berzelius as simple salts, it is to the light 

 afforded by his investigations, that we owe the power of seeing the 

 subject correctly. I believe the idea, that any other body besides 

 oxygen could produce both acids and bases capable of forming salts, 

 originated with Berzelius, in the instance of sulphur. 



Recapitulation and review of the grounds of his deviating from the 

 language and arrangement of Berzelius, and other distinguished 

 chemists ; with some additional explanations and suggestions, by 

 R. Hare, M. D., Professor of Chemistry in the University of 

 Pennsylvania. 



According to the Berzelian nomenclature, bodies which produce 

 salts by a union with radicals are called halogen or salt producing 

 bodies, while those which with radicals form both acids and bases, 

 capable by their union of constituting salts, are called amphigen bodies 

 or both producers. Salts, produced by the first mentioned class are 

 called haloid salts; those produced by the other are called araphide 

 salts. 



I objected to this classification, that the words salt, acid and base, 

 were broad, vague and unsettled in their acceptation, having, by 

 chemists in general, and especially by Berzelius, been employed to de- 

 signate substances differing in composition, and extremely discordant 



