mostly contain azote, { Bombic. }
and frequently phosphorus. { Sebacic. }
{ Lithic. }
{ Prussic. }
_Note._--The radicals from the vegetable kingdom are converted by a
first degree of oxygenation into vegetable oxyds, such as sugar, starch,
and gum or mucus: Those of the animal kingdom by the same means form
animal oxyds, as lymph, &c.--A.
SECT. II.--_Observations upon the Table of Compound Radicals._
The older chemists being unacquainted with the composition of acids, and
not suspecting them to be formed by a peculiar radical or base for each,
united to an acidifying principle or element common to all, could not
consequently give any name to substances of which they had not the most
distant idea. We had therefore to invent a new nomenclature for this
subject, though we were at the same time sensible that this nomenclature
must be susceptible of great modification when the nature of the
compound radicals shall be better understood[37].
The compound oxydable and acidifiable radicals from the vegetable and
animal kingdoms, enumerated in the foregoing table, are not hitherto
reducible to systematic nomenclature, because their exact analysis is as
yet unknown. We only know in general, by some experiments of my own, and
some made by Mr Hassenfratz, that most of the vegetable acids, such as
the tartarous, oxalic, citric, malic, acetous, pyro-tartarous, and
pyromucous, have radicals composed of hydrogen and charcoal, combined
in such a way as to form single bases, and that these acids only differ
from each other by the proportions in which these two substances enter
into the composition of their bases, and by the degree of oxygenation
which these bases have received. We know farther, chiefly from the
experiments of Mr Berthollet, that the radicals from the animal kingdom,
and even some of those from vegetables, are of a more compound nature,
and, besides hydrogen and charcoal, that they often contain azote, and
sometimes phosphorus; but we are not hitherto possessed of sufficiently
accurate experiments for calculating the proportions of these several
substances. We are therefore forced, in the manner of the older
chemists, still to name these acids after the substances from which they
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