PROFESSOR HAMILTON ON THE REVIEW OF HIS ‘ SUGGESTIONS.’ 63 
the formula. And this the reviewer seems to have fully understood when he 
wrote the next paragraph :— 
“ These suggestions give us, in fact, nothing more than a concise method for 
translating symbolic formulae into language.” I take this, from so able an 
authority, as a very high testimony in favour of the ‘ Suggestions.’ If we can 
only succeed in concisely expressing in language, oral and written, all that can 
be so accurately and succinctly expressed by symbols, our nomenclature will 
have attained to a very high degree of perfection. 
I am, yours very respectfully, 
George Hamilton. 
["VYe beg to assure Mr. Hamilton that in writing our remarks on his pamphlet, 
we were anxious to pay him every personal courtesy and respect, and that we 
had no intention of ascribing any “ boldness” to him in the sense in which he 
appears to interpret it. We may also observe that we did not entertain the 
“erroneous opinion” that he offered his “Suggestions ” as a “perfect system,” 
or proposed any immediate radical change of names. But we did assume that 
he desired the value of his “ Suggestions for a new system ” to be tested by free 
discussion and criticism. 
We did not refer to his proposal, that the Chemical Society should appoint a 
commission to study the subject of nomenclature, because we considered that it 
had been practically anticipated, a committee of that Society having been 
formed for the purpose about two years ago. 
The eight principles laid down in his work were not noticed in detail, because 
we ventured to think it of little use to discuss principles if they cannot be re¬ 
duced to practice. Probably many chemists could succinctly express what a 
perfect system should be; the whole difficulty is to create such a system. As 
the bulk of Mr. Hamilton’s pamphlet is occupied by a method for the uniform 
construction of a new set of names, we regarded that method as a practical 
contribution towards the solution of a practical difficulty, and made it the sub¬ 
ject of our criticism. 
We implied that Mr. Hamilton’s names are not in accordance with his second 
principle. They depend on the proportional numbers assigned to the elements. 
But these numbers are not ascertained by direct experiment; they are the re¬ 
sult of reasoning on a number of facts, and they involve “ views of the consti¬ 
tution, relations, and functions of bodies.” All chemists do not use the same 
table of combining proportions, nor is there much immediate prospect of greater 
agreement in this respect than has previously existed, consequently Mr. 
Hamilton’s scheme would involve practical inconvenience. The same substance 
would be named differently by different writers. Mercurachloran would be 
written by one chemist for calomel and by another for corrosive sublimate. 
Would such a name be “ precise as the terms of mathematics ”? We are inclined 
to think that we have names at present in use which involve less hypothesis and 
are less open to objection. 
To our remarks on the name Hydretoxan (expressing H 2 O) for water, Mr. 
Hamilton gives two answers. To the first we reply, that as a “ matter of fact,” 
water yields two volumes of hydrogen and one of oxygen; but when Mr. 
Hamilton calls these '''' equivalent volumes^'''' he mixes hypothesis with fact, and 
that hypothesis he imports into his name. Does he suppose that all chemists 
who formerly wrote water as HO were ignorant of the “ matter of fact ” he 
describes ? His second answer is simply a quibble. In mentioning proportional 
numbers in this country, the unity of hydrogen is always understood and there¬ 
fore not expressed. Mr. Hamilton apparently admits that two formulas are in 
use for Alumina, but he considers that a molecule containing five atoms has the 
same constitution as one containing seven. 
