REPORT ON CHEMISTRY. 
445 
pensate for the inconvenience arising from the great change of 
nomenclature. 
Bonsclorf is not unsupported in his views by the opinions of 
other chemists. In the same volume of the Annales de Chimie 
(xxxiv.) in which appeared his first paper on the double chlo¬ 
rides, is contained a valuable Memoir of Boullay on the double 
iodides, and on some compounds of the iodides with the chlo¬ 
rides. These compounds he represented as simple salts, in 
w'hich the one iodide acted as an acid, the other as a base, 
agreeably to the views of Bonsdorf in regard to the chlorides. 
Dr. Thomson also in his system of chemistry now publishing, 
has adopted the nomenclature of Bonsdorf. 
On the other hand his views are opposed by Berzelius and 
most Gf the German chemists. Liebig also, who, about the 
same time with Boullay, investigated many of these double salts, 
and among others those which the cyanide of potassium forms 
with the chloride and the iodide of silver, the iodide of po¬ 
tassium with the cyanide of mercury, and the nitrate with the 
iodide of the same metal, ( Jahrbuch der Ch. P/i. xix. p. 251,) 
met with difficulties which induced him to reject it. The 
objections that have been advanced against his theory, Bonsdorf 
has endeavoured to remove in a valuable paper on some new 
double bromides, published in the Stockholm Transactions for 
1830 . 
Chemical Notation. —Some discussion has lately taken place 
in the English journals on the subject of chemical and minera- 
logical notation. Berzelius, and after him the German che¬ 
mists, have long been in the habit of using symbols to denote 
chemical substances and their compounds. In contriving these 
symbols the initial letter of the Latin name of each substance 
was selected as the sign of that substance. Thus Fe ( ferram) 
denotes iron; Sn ( stannum ), tin; Tu, tungsten; O oxygen; 
S, sulphur, &c. Adding these, Fe + O, or Fe, is protoxide of 
• •• 55 
iron ; S -}- 3 O, or S, sulphuric acid; Fe + 2 S, or Fe, bisulphuret 
of iron. When two or more binary compounds are united, as 
• •• • 
S + Fe, forming sulphate of protoxide of iron, for the sake of 
• •• • 
shortness S Fe are placed together without any sign between 
them : and in organic compounds where three or more elements 
are present, as in cyanic acid, instead of placing the elements 
N + 2C + 0, they have been grouped thus, N C~ O, where 
the number of atoms of carbon is denoted by the index placed 
over its symbol. 
