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CHEMICAL  NOMENCLATURE. 
CHEMICAL  NOMENCLATURE. 
By  J.  Cheston  Morris,  M.D. 
In  the  March  number  of  this  Journal  I  drew  attention  to  some 
infringements  on  the  laws  of  nomenclature  ;  in  the  May  number  is 
an  answer  by  Dr.  Bache,  to  my  article,  which  seems  to  me  to  call 
for  a  more  distinct  statement,  on  my  part,  of  the  mooted  point. 
The  whole  question  lies  in  a  nutshell,  and  resolves  itself  into  an 
inquiry  as  to  what  is  generally  received  among  chemists  as  the 
law.  As  to  the  preferableness  of  one  plan  or  the  other  for 
teaching  students,  we  ought  never  to  sacrifice  truth  to  expediency, 
— so  that  even  if  the  "  equivalent  composition  principle,"  were 
easier  to  remember  (which  I  beg  leave  to  doubt)  yet  less  correct, 
according  to  established  chemical  usage,  we  would  not  be  justified 
in  adopting  it — such  a  course  would  lead  inevitably  to  the  confu- 
sion I  have  already  pointed  out. 
Fownes  says,  in  the  last  American  edition  of  his  chemistry,  p. 
200  : — "  When  a  powerful  oxygen  acid  and  a  powerful  metallic 
base  are  united  in  such  proportions  that  they  exactly  destroy 
each  other's  properties,  the  resulting  salt  is  said  to  be  neutral : 
it  is  incapable  of  affecting  vegetable  colors.  Now,  in  all  these 
well  characterised  neutral  salts,  a  constant  and  very  remarkable 
relation  is  observed  to  exist  between  the  quantity  of  oxygen  in 
the  base,  and  the  quantity  of  acid  in  the  salt.  This  relation  is 
expressed  in  the  following  manner :  To  form  a  neutral  combi- 
nation, as  many  equivalents  of  acid  must  be  present  in  the  salt 
as  there  are  of  oxygen  in  the  base  itself.  In  fact  this  has  become 
the  very  definition  of  neutrality,  as  the  action  on  vegetable  colors 
is  sometimes  an  unsafe  guide"  The  italics  are  mine.  This  is 
the  only  authority  quoted  by  Dr.  Bache ;  hence,  I  think  it  suffi- 
cient to  have  shown  how  entirely  he  supports  my  view,  only 
adding  that  the  language  of  every  standard  chemical  work  I  am 
familiar  with  is  the  same.  As  to  the  name  bestowed  on  the  law 
I  am  advocating,  I  think  it  would  be  better  expressed  as  the 
"  law  of  neutrality  of  composition,"  to  indicate  that  it  refers  not 
so  much  to  the  action  on  vegetable  colors  as  to  the  proportion  of 
the  components  of  a  salt. 
I  acknowledge  a  preference  for  the  terms  protosulphate, 
deutosulphate,  &c,  for  ordinary  use,  to  sulphate  of  the  pro- 
