Page:Lavoisier-ElementsOfChemistry.pdf/198

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.
120
E L E M E N T S

barbarous language, difficult both to pronounce and to be remembered. Besides, this part of chemistry being still far from that accuracy it must arrive to, the perfection of the science ought certainly to precede that of its language; and we must still, for some time, retain the old names for the animal oxyds and acids. We have only ventured to make a few slight modifications of these names, by changing the termination into ous, when we have a reason to suppose the base to be in excess, and the into ic, when we suspect the oxygen predominates.

The following are all the vegetable acids hitherto known:

1. Actetous acid. 8.Pyro-mucous acid.
2. Acetic acid. 9.Pyro-lignous acid.
3. Oxalic acid. 10.Gallic acid.
4. Tartarous acid. 11.Benozic acid.
5. Pyro-tartarous acid. 12.Camphoric acid.
6. Citric acid. 13.Succinic acid.
7. Malic acid.

Though all these acids, as had been already said, are chiefly, and almost entirely, composed of hydrogen, charcoal, and oxygen, yet, properly speaking, they contain neither water carbonic acid nor oil, but only the elements necessary for forming these substances. The power of affinity reciprocally exerted by the hydrogen, charcoal, and oxygen, in these acids, in in a state of