368 Dr. Prout on the ultimate composition 
with. There is also no trouble of collecting or estimating 
the quantity of water, a part of the common process attended 
with much trouble, and liable to innumerable accidental 
errors, besides those already mentioned, and which there is 
no method of obviating or appreciating ; here, on the con¬ 
trary, the results are obtained in an obvious and permanent 
form, and, from the ease with which they are thus verified, 
comparatively very little subject to error. 
It need scarcely be stated, that the form and principles of 
this apparatus render it well adapted for many other chemical 
operations besides the analysis of organized substances. Such, 
for example, as the reduction of oxides by hydrogen, and a 
variety of others that will readily occur to the practical 
chemist. 
Of the Saccharine principle. 
In the following observations, the word Sugar, is used in its 
ordinary acceptation ; but the extended sense in which the 
term saccharine principle is employed, requires a few remarks. 
Messrs. Gay Lussac and Thenard were induced to con¬ 
clude, from their experiments on organized products, that 
when the hydrogen and oxygen of a substance exist in it in 
the proportions in which they form water, the substance is 
neither acid nor alkaline, as in sugar, starch, gum, &c.; that 
when the oxygen exceeds this proportion, the substance 
possesses acid properties ; that when it is less, an oily or 
resinous character.^ These conclusions are true to a certain 
extent, but by no means universally so, as will be shown 
hereafter. I shall however adopt this general distribution of 
* Recherches Physico-chimiques. ii. 321. 
