Existence of Compound Radicals in Amphide Salts. 57 



Art. VI.— An Abstract (from Kane's Elements,) of the Argu- 

 ments in favor of the Existence of Compound Radicals in 

 Amphide Salts. 



Having published Dr. Hare's effort to refute the arguments 

 advanced in favor of the existence of compound radicals in am- 

 phide salts, it may be just, as respects those readers who have 

 not access to Kane's Elements, to republish from that work the 

 arguments in question. (See page 631.) 



" It had been long remarked as curious, that bodies so totally- 

 different in composition as the compound of chlorine with a me- 

 tal on the hand, and of an oxygen acid with the oxide of the 

 metal on the other, should be so similar in properties, that both 

 must be classed together as salts, and should give origin to series 

 of basic and acid compounds for the most part completely par- 

 allel. This difficulty has been so much felt by the most enlight- 

 ened chemists, that doubts have been raised as to whether the 

 acid and base, which are placed in contact to form by their union 

 an oxygen salt, really exist in it when formed ; and it has been 

 suggested, that at the moment of union a new arrangement of 

 elements takes place, by which the structure of the resulting salt 

 is assimilated to that of a compound of chlorine or of iodine with 

 a metal. This view, at first sight so far-fetched, which considers 

 that in glauber's salt there is neither sulphuric acid, nor soda, but 

 sulphur, oxygen, and sodium, in some other and simpler mode of 

 combination, is now very extensively received by chemists; and 

 I shall proceed, therefore, to describe with some detail the form 

 which it has assumed, and the evidence by which it is supported. 



" The greater number of those bodies which are termed oxygen 

 acids, have not been in reality insulated, and what are popularly 

 so called are merely supposed to contain the dry acid combined 

 with water. Thus the nearest approach we can make to nitric 

 acid, is the liquid N0 6 H; to acetic acid, the crystalline body 

 C 4 H 4 4 ; and to oxalic acid, the sublimed crystals C-0 4 H; we 

 look upon these bodies as being combinations of the dry acid 

 with water, and we write their formulae NO 5 -f HO, and C 4 H 3 3 

 -fHO and C 2 3 -f HO, but that these dry acids exist at all is a 

 mere assumption. Hence with regard to these instances, and 

 they embrace the majority of all known acids, the idea that the 



Vol. xlvi, No. 1.— Oct.-Dec. 1843. 8 



