224 



The idea thrown out by Dumas, to which Liebig alludes, 

 was, that ether might be considered as a base, and the acid 

 ethers as salts of that base. This idea Dumas himself, on 

 further consideration, rejected, and assumed ether to be a 

 hydrate of olefiant gas, which he made the basic element in 

 the acid ethers, thus rejecting the form c 4 h 5 o + acid, and 

 taking ho + (C4H4 + acid,) as the foundation of all his sub- 

 sequent researches. The sense in which Dumas considered 

 ether as a base, was the same as that in which chemists re- 

 gard the vegetable alcalies as bases, — that is, bodies which 

 neutralize acids and form salts, — without seeking more pro- 

 foundly into their constitution, or involving any hypothesis ; 

 whilst the essence of the views propounded by Dr. Kane and 

 Berzelius consisted in considering ether as the oxide of a pe- 

 culiar compound radical [Ethyl. Ethereum) c 4 h 5 . resembling 

 the ammonium of the ammonia series, — an idea which Dumas 

 never thought of proposing at all, and indeed one which 

 the state of science, at the time of his researches on the 

 ethers, could scarcely permit him to conceive. 



So far from the Ether Theory being less complete, as 

 promulgated by Dr. Kane, than when proposed by Berze- 

 lius, Dr. Kane asserted the reverse to be really the case, 

 for it was only after Liebig himself had modified Ber- 

 zelius' views, that the continental theory became identi- 

 cal with that previously brought forward in Dublin, — Ber- 

 zelius having destroyed the unity of the theory by making 

 alcohol c 2 h 3 -f- o, which we now know to be a totally different 

 substance, and Liebig having shown that it should be con- 

 sidered, C4H5O -f- ho, which it had always been considered in 

 the theory proposed by Dr. Kane. Thus in the only point 

 in which the theories differed, the form of Berzelius was the 

 less complete of the two. 



Dr. Kane has, since the promulgation of that theory, been 

 induced, from the results of researches in other departments, 

 to suspend his implicit belief in its sufficiency. Having ad- 



