amples. When sulphur is combined with a small proportion of oxygen, it forms, in this first or lower degree of oxygenation, a volatile acid, having a penetrating odour, and possessed of very particular qualities. By a larger proportion of oxygen, it is changed into a fixed, heavy acid, without any odour, and which, by combination with other bodies, gives products quite different from those furnished by the former. In this instance, the principles of our nomenclature seem to fail; and it seems difficult to derive such terms from the name of the acidifiable base, as shall distinctly express these two degrees of saturation, or oxygenation, without circumlocution. By reflection, however, upon the subject, or perhaps rather from the necessity of the case, we have thought it allowable to express these varieties in the oxygenation of the acids, by simply varying the termination of their specific names. The volatile acid produced from sulphur was anciently known to Stahl under the name of sulphurous acid[1]. We have
- ↑ The term formerly used by the English chemists for this acid was written sulphureous; but we have thought proper to spell it as above, that it may better conform with the similar terminations of nitrous, carbonous, &c. to be used hereafter. In general, we have used the English terminations ic and ous to translate the terms of the Author which end with ique and eux, with hardly any other alterations.—E.
