338 Remarks on Chemical Theory, and on 



and elementary treatises they are now inwrought into the 

 whole texture of the science. But the late acute and logic- 

 al Dr. Murray never became a convert to those views, al- 

 though he did in the latter part of his life perhaps virtually 

 abandon the old ground ; Professor Berzelius, whose name 

 stands as high as that of any man, was a vigorous and for- 

 midable opponent of the new views, and we have not heard 

 that he has changed his opinions. If we may be permitted 

 to express an opinion, but without any intended disrespect 

 to the highest authorities of the day, we would add that there 

 appears to have been rather too much haste to adopt the 

 new theory, in all its bearings — not only its proofs, but in 

 its hypotheses and conjectures, and to carry them in the 

 fprm of doctrine, into every part of the science. In the 

 supposed play between oxigen, hydrogen, chlorine and the 

 metallic bases of the fixed alkalies and earths to produce 

 the muriates and the chlorides respectively; a maze in 

 which they are made to pass, insensibly, into one another, 

 back and forward, and that often with no perceptible change 

 of properties, and often also with no better proof than the 

 convenience of these supposed changes ; in this dance of 

 affinities there is as large a claim on our acquiescence in the 

 authority of names, as can well be found in the history of 

 science. A moistened chloride becomes a muriate and a 

 dried muriate a chloride, and yet Thenard informs us, that 

 a crystal of common salt although formed in the midst of 

 water is still nothing but a chloride ; but this crystal mois- 

 tened or perhaps dissolved becomes a true muriate. Who 

 can believe, rather we should say, who ought to believe 

 that where there is so total a change in composition there 

 should be so little in external and physical properties. 



The non-combustion of charcoal too in chlorine, which 

 does admit of explanation upon the old view, confessedly 

 admits of none at all upon the new : it is true this is now 

 called an ultimate fact, but what is this more than to say 

 over again, that the thing cannot be explained. Those 

 very judicious writers, Dr. Henry and the Messrs. Aikins, 

 in their Chemical Dictionary (at least in the last editions of, 

 or additions to those works that we, have seen,) take a more 

 cautious ground and giving man}- of the most important ex- 

 planations upon both theories, reserve their final opinion for 

 a day of greater clearness and certainty. If the patronage 



