ON CHEMICAL 
NOMENCLATURE. 
5 
Letter from J. J. Berzelius of Stockholm to R. Hare, 
M. D., Professor of Chemistry in the University of 
Pennsylvania, acknowledging the receipt of a communi- 
cation respecting Nomenclature, and replying thereto. 
Stockholm, September ^^d, 1834. 
Sir — I am very much obliged to you for the remarks, 
which, under the date of June 21st, you had the friendship to 
communicate to me, respecting the nomenclature which I 
have employed in my Treatise of Chemistry. 
I perceive that having contemplated chemical phenomena 
under different points of view, we differ as to the nomenclature 
which is the most appropriate for their description. I con- 
sider the combinations of metals with chlorine, bromine, &c., 
as salts; whilst you, in accordance with Mr. De Bondsdorpp, 
consider them as bases and acids, capable of forming salts by 
their union. 
If it were expedient that chemical classification should be 
dependent on the number of simple bodies which enter into 
each combination, this idea of Mr. De Bondsdorff would 
without doubt be preferable ; but if attention be due to the 
chemical properties which characterize combinations, we 
cannot adhere to an arrangement founded on the number of 
the elements. Yet so essential is it in chemistry to have 
reference to properties, that a system of chemistry in which 
common and analogous properties should not affect the ar- 
rangement, would present a mass of facts so chaotic, that no 
memory would be competent to retain them. In a system 
thus strictly conformable to the ideas of Mr. De Bondsdorff, 
cyanogen, though in its properties resembing chlorine or 
bromine which are simple bodies, ought to be considered, 
also, as a base or as an acid having azote for its radical — 
I am persuaded you would not approve of extending the 
system of De Bondsdorff so far; but if it be correct, it 
would be inconsistent not to make this extension. 
But let us return to the combinations of the metals with 
chlorine, fluorine, &c., and make, in imagination, the follow- 
