﻿M. Dumas's Remarks on Affinity. 93 



or at any rate those who, giving to his nomenclature all the 

 force of a doctrine, had seen, in the creation of a language made 

 to aid the memory by logic, a real representation of the intimate 

 constitution of compound bodies. 



Such, in fact, is the power of the forms of language, that it is 

 necessary to make an effort over one's self to understand that in 

 an oxide or in a sulphuret, for instance, it may be that the 

 metal is not the body overcome, conquered, subordinated, and 

 that oxygen and sulphur are not the dominant bodies. In the 

 same way in salts. The French nomenclature, irreproachable 

 so far, that it limits itself to making known the nature of bodies 

 united to form a compound, has never attempted to define the 

 arrangement they affect in the combination once it is formed. 

 To give it this meaning is to falsify it and destroy its real use. 



The French nomenclature was intended to interpret a natural 

 classification. It first discriminated elements and compound 

 bodies. In the latter it has formed genera, and characterized 

 species. The genera have been defined by the element common 

 to all the species — oxygen for oxides, sulphur for sulphurets, 

 carbonic and nitric acids for carbonates or nitrates ; the species 

 by the substance which forms the complement of the com- 

 pound : — oxide of iron, of zinc ; sulphuret of lead, of silver ; car- 

 bonate of lime, nitrate of potash. 



The French chemists have proceeded as naturalists; and as 

 they created a new language, they have been able to make the 

 names of the genera singularly significant by varying the ter- 

 minations. 



But there is nothing, either in this new language or in the 

 interesting exposition of it in which Lavoisier has laid down its 

 origin and its principles, to indicate that on his part and that of 

 his co-workers there was any other object than that w r hich has 

 been mentioned — to range together compounds w r hich have an 

 element in common, to indicate what substances enter into each 

 combination, and in what proportion. The idea of a molecular 

 arrangement, of an intimate constitution, of the compound was 

 never entertained. 



At the present time we should be disposed to admit that the 

 theory of chemical combination proposed by Ampere agrees best 

 with the general laws of mechanics, for it depends upon uni- 

 versal attraction — and with the special laws of chemistry, for it 

 brings in as the determining and characteristic element of the 

 constitution of bodies the shape of their molecules, which would 

 contain at least four atoms each where they are tetrahedral, and 

 as many as fifty atoms for other solids. 



It would be unjust to omit the mention of M. Gaudin's name 

 by the side of that of Ampere. The efforts of this ingenious 



