SECOND REPORT- 1832 . 
442 
The views advanced in these Memoirs were borne out by such 
a mass of experimental evidence, that they were at once 
adopted by nearly all the continental chemists, and Rose in 
particular soon applied them to a simple and happy explanation 
of the hitherto obscure composition of many native sulphurets. 
In this country also they are beginning to make their way, and 
they have been incorporated by Dr. Thomson in the last edi¬ 
tion of his Inorganic Chemistry . 
Chlorine salts .—While Berzelius was pursuing his investi¬ 
gations into the nature of the sulphur salts, Bonsdorf, according 
to his first paper on the subject in the Annates de Chimie , had 
been led into similar views in regard to the chlorides and iodides. 
Led by the analogy which exists between oxygen, chlorine, 
and iodine, in producing combustion when uniting with simple 
substances, and in forming soluble compounds with many fixed 
bodies, he adopted the opinion that chlorine, iodine, bromine 
and fluorine,like oxygen, were acid-and-haseformers , producing, 
by their union with the metals and other simple bodies, com¬ 
pounds which possess the properties of acids or bases. In 
support of this view, he showed that many simple chlorides and 
iodides might be made to combine into what were formerly called 
double chlorides, in which he supposed the one chloride to act 
the part of an acid, the other the part of a base, and he invented 
a nomenclature in accordance with his peculiar opinions. If 
the views of Bonsdorf are correct, the distinction which Ber¬ 
zelius makes between his salt-formers and his acid-and-hase 
formers is not founded in nature. Dr. Thomson has adopted 
these views and incorporated them in his system of inorganic 
chemistry, and Professor Daniell assumes that we cannot adopt 
the views of Berzelius in regard to the sulphur salts, without 
making those of Bonsdorf our own also; but it appears to me 
that the two opinions stand upon very different grounds, and 
that however simple the views of Bonsdorf may render the con¬ 
sideration of the chlorine, &c. salts, they can never be ranked 
in the same family with those of oxygen and sulphur. 
The main chemical distinction between oxygen and chlorine 
is this,—that while chlorine neutralizes an electro-positive metal 
and forms a salt with it, oxygen never neutralizes the metals, 
but forms with them compounds possessing either acid or al¬ 
kaline properties. The opinion of Bonsdorf is, that the chlo¬ 
rides are not neutral compounds, but that, like the compounds 
of oxygen with electro-positive elements, they are all either 
acids or alkalies, and that when they unite, they do so precisely 
as an oxygen acid and an oxide do, forming a simple chlorine 
