obliged to use this small deviation.--E.]
[Note B: Mr Lavoisier has hydrargirique; but mercurius being used for
the base or metal, the name of the acid, as above, is equally regular,
and less harsh.--E.]
In this list, which contains 48 acids, I have enumerated 17 metallic
acids hitherto very imperfectly known, but upon which Mr Berthollet is
about to publish a very important work. It cannot be pretended that all
the acids which exist in nature, or rather all the acidifiable bases,
are yet discovered; but, on the other hand, there are considerable
grounds for supposing that a more accurate investigation than has
hitherto been attempted will diminish the number of the vegetable acids,
by showing that several of these, at present considered as distinct
acids, are only modifications of others. All that can be done in the
present state of our knowledge is, to give a view of chemistry as it
really is, and to establish fundamental principles, by which such bodies
as may be discovered in future may receive names, in conformity with one
uniform system.
The known salifiable bases, or substances capable of being converted
into neutral salts by union with acids, amount to 24; viz. 3 alkalies, 4
earths, and 17 metallic substances; so that, in the present state of
chemical knowledge, the whole possible number of neutral salts amounts
to 1152[33]. This number is upon the supposition that the metallic acids
are capable of dissolving other metals, which is a new branch of
chemistry not hitherto investigated, upon which depends all the metallic
combinations named _vitreous_. There is reason to believe that many of
these supposable saline combinations are not capable of being formed,
which must greatly reduce the real number of neutral salts producible by
nature and art. Even if we suppose the real number to amount only to
five or six hundred species of possible neutral salts, it is evident
that, were we to distinguish them, after the manner of the ancients,
either by the names of their first discoverers, or by terms derived from
the substances from which they are procured, we should at last have such
a confusion of arbitrary designations, as no memory could possibly
retain. This method might be tolerable in the early ages of chemistry,
or even till within these twenty years, when only about thirty species
of salts were known; but, in the present times, when the number is
augmenting daily, when every new acid gives us 24 or 48 new salts,
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