92 ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS. 
Pelletier, Vauquelin, Parmentier, Deyeux, and 
Proust. 
"I have assisted/^ continues he, "at this magical and sublime 
rebuilding. I have had the happiness of seeing these men of 
genius, and been honoured with their confidence; and agree- 
ably with their prediction, I have seen their favourite science, 
Chemistry, that child of Pharmacy, enriched with a multitude 
of new facts, and capital discoveries, advance with a sure 
step towards the explanation of the grandest phenomena of 
nature. 
"But in the midst of this prosperity, with what joy have I 
always found its most numerous and ardent followers among 
the Pharmaciens. You know that Chemistry has never had 
cause to blush for her cradle. More than once has the first 
academy in the kingdom, sought, in the ranks of the apothe- 
caries, the men who should make her forget the losses she had 
sustained." 
Let me, then, convey to you a sketch, brief and imperfect 
as it must necessarily be, of those particulars to which I have 
called your attention. 
The discovery of cyanogen was the first great step in 
organic researches; for it made known to chemists a pseudo- 
elementary compound, analogous, in all its chemical relations, 
to the electro-negative elements; thus destroying the pre- 
sumption that their peculiar properties always indicated a 
simple substance. This discovery reduced to a beautiful 
simplicity the theory of prussic acid and its compounds, and 
taught chemists the true principles on which to investigate 
the composition of organic bodies. Another most important 
step in these investigations, was the theory of saponifica- 
tion. All the vegetable and animal oils are composed of 
two elements, one of which is an organic acid, and the other 
an oxide of hydro-carbon. When submitted to the action of 
metallic oxides and water, the base combines with an atom 
of water and forms glycerine, while the acid unites with the 
oxide and forms a true salt, which is either a soap or a plaster. 
The theory of the ethers is another of the great discoveries 
