System of Chemistry, by Prof. Berzelius, 63 



My apology will be found in the adage — " Amicus Plato, sed ma- 

 gis arnica Veritas." Besides, if my opinions are incorrect, they will 

 only react upon their author. The productions of Berzelius stand 

 deservedly too high in public favor to be reached by ill founded crit- 

 icism. 



The most striking feature in the nomenclature of Berzelius, is the 

 formation of two classes of bodies ; one class called " halogene" or 

 salt producing, because they are conceived to produce salts direct- 

 ly ; the other called " amphigene" or both producing, being produc- 

 tive both of acids and bases, and of course indirectly of salts. To 

 render this division eligible, it appears to me that the terms acid, 

 base, and salt, should, in the first place, be strictly defined. Unfor- 

 tunately there are no terms in use, more broad, vague, and unsettled 

 in their meaning. Agreeably to the common acceptation, chloride 

 of sodium is pre-eminently entitled to be called a salt ; since in com- 

 iKon parlance, when no distinguishing term is annexed, salt is the 

 name of that chloride. This is quite reasonable, as it is well known 

 that it was from this compound, that the genus received its name. 

 Other substances, having in their obvious qualities some analogy with 

 chloride of sodium, were, at an early period, readily admitted to be 

 species of the same genus ; as, for instance, Glauber's salt, Epsom 

 salt, sal ammoniac. Yet founding their pretensions upon similitude 

 in obvious qualities, few of the substances called salts, in the broader 

 sense of the name, could have been admitted into the class. Inso- 

 luble chlorides have evidently, on the score of properties, as little 

 claim to be considered as salts, as insoluble oxides. Luna cornea, 

 plumbum corneum, butter of antimony, and the fuming liquor of Li- 

 bavius, are the appellations given respectively to chlorides of silver, 

 lead, antimony, and tin, which are quite as deficient of the saline 

 character as the corresponding compounds of the same metal with 

 oxygen. Fluoride of calcium (fluor spar) is as unlike a salt as lime, 

 the oxide of the same metal. No saline quality can be perceived in 

 the soluble " haloid salts," so called by Berzelius, while free from 

 water; and when a compound of this kind is moistened, even by 

 contact with the tongue, it may be considered as a salt formed of an 

 hydracid and an oxybase, produced by a union of the hydrogen of 

 the water with the halogene element, and of the oxygen with the ra- 

 dical. It is admitted by Berzelius, vol. iii, p. 330, that it cannot be 

 demonstrated that the elements of the water, and those of an haloid 

 salt, dissolved in that liquid, do not exist in the state of an hydracid 

 and an oxybase, forming a salt by their obvious union. 



