of a new world. But with the fresh charms, the exaggerated impressions also of novelty wear away; and then, retracing our steps, we wonder that people so widely separated from the nations of the West, both geographically and historically, and really differing so much in their outward aspect, should, in their more latent traits, so much resemble them. The nearer we come to the inner spirit of humanity, the more points of agreement appear, and this not merely in the possession of the universal attributes of human nature, but in specific habits, usages, and superstitions. What at first seems stranger still is, that when we seek the native of the Archipelago in the mountains of the interior, where he has lived for probably more than two thousand years secluded from all foreign influence, and where we expect to find all the differences at their maximum, we are sometimes astonished to find him approximating most closely of all to the European. In the Jakún, for instance, girded though his loins are with terap bark, and armed as he is with his sumpitan and poisoned arrows, we recognize the plain and clownish manners and simple ideas of the uneducated peasant in the more secluded parts of European countries; and when he describes how, at his merry-makings, his neighbors assemble, the arrack tampúi flows around and the dance, in which both sexes mingle, is prolonged, till each seats himself on the ground with his partner on his knee and his bambu of arrack by his side, when the dance gives place to song, we are forcibly reminded of the free and jovial, if rude, manners of the lower rural classes of the West. Freed from the repellant prejudices and artificial trappings of Hindu and Mahomedan civilization, we see in the man of the Archipelago more that is akin than the reverse to the unpolished man of Europe. When we turn to the present political condition of the Archipelago, we are struck by the contrast which it presents to that which characterized it three or four centuries ago. The mass of the people, it is true, in all their private relations, remain in nearly the same state in which they were found by the earliest European voyagers, and in which they had existed for many centuries previously. But, as nations, they have withered in the presence of the uncongenial, greedy and relentless spirit of European policy. They have been subdued by the hard and determined will of Europeans, who in general have pursued the purposes for which they have come into the Archipelago without giving any sympathy to the inhabitants. The nomadic spirit, never extinguished during all the changes which they underwent, had made them adventurous and warlike when they rose into nations. But now, long overawed and restrained by the power of Europeans, the national habits of action have, in most parts of the Archipelago, been lost, or are only faintly maintained in the piratical expedi tions of some. Their pride has fallen. Their living literature is gone, with the power, the wars, and the glory which inspired it. The day has departed when Singapore could be invaded by Javanese, when Johore could extend its dominion to Borneo on the one side and Sumatra on the other,-when the fleets of Acheen and Malacca could encounter each other in the Straits to dispute the dominion of the Eastern Seas,-when the warrants of the Sultan of Menangkabau were as potent over the Malayan nations as the bulls of Rome ever were over those of Christendom,— when a champion of Malacca could make his name be known all over the Archipelago,-and when the kings of the Peninsula. sent their sons, escorted by celebrated warriors, to demand the daughters of the emperors of Majapahit in marriage. The Malayan princes of the present day, retaining all the feudal attachment and homage of their subjects, and finding no more honorable vent for the assertion of their freedom from restraint and the gratification of their self-will, have almost everywhere sunk into indolent debauchees and greedy monopolists, and, incited by their own rapacity and that of the courtiers who surround them, drain and paralyze the industry of their people. ART. XIII. On the Anomalies presented in the Atomic Volume of Sulphur and Nitrogen; with remarks on Chemical Classification, and a notice of M. Laurent's Theory of Binary Molecules; by T. S. HUNT, of the Geol. Commission of Canada. (In a letter to one of the Editors.) THE similarity of functions enjoyed by oxygen and sulphur, is now generally recognized by chemists. It is known that sulphur may replace oxygen, equivalent for equivalent, and produce combinations which are referable to the same type and often isomorphous with the oxygen compounds. It is unnecessary to recall instances of this; the parallelism of the oxyds and sulphurets of the metals is perfect, and in the sulphates and hyposulphites of soda, two salts identical in form and in the amount of crystal-water, we have the same formula, with the exception that sulphur in the second replaces an equivalent of the oxygen in the first. The sulphate is SNa, O,, and the hyposulphite SNa, (O,S). The researches in organic chemistry have still farther established this relation, and shown that oxygen with sulphur, selenium and tellurium, constitute a natural group. Chlorine, iodine and bromine, and nitrogen, phosphorus and arsenic, constitute two analogous groups. Besides their power of replacing each other, it is found that elements thus related have generally the same atomic volume, and their vapors consequently the same combining measure. If with the French chemists we divide the equivalents of hydrogen, chlorine and the metals by 2, and write the formula of water, H, O or H, O,, their combining volumes will be the same as that of oxygen. But if we look at the volume of sulphur, we find an exception to this rule: the specific gravity of its vapor is 6-654, while that of oxygen gas is 1.1057. Taking the combining volume of oxygen as unity, that of sulphur is, and while the volume of the atom of oxygen (= the atomic weight divided by the density) is represented by 7-2354, that of sulphur is found to be 2-4045. This fact with a similar one in the history of nitrogen, has long been an unexplained difficulty in the way of admitting that the combining volumes of all the elements should be identical. In an attempt towards a system of chemical classification, some suggestions have arisen which will, I think, enable us to explain satisfactorily this apparent anomaly. Rejecting the ordinary ideas of electro-negative and electro-positive relations, as not only baseless but erroneous in their tendency, I consider with MM. Gerhardt and Laurent, that each class of compounds is derived from a normal species or primitive type by successive substitutions. This idea I have endeavored to extend both by the formation of new classes, and by enlarging our views of substitutions. 3 In considering such combinations as SO, and Se O., which contain three equivalents of the elements of the oxygen group, it was necessary to admit a normal species which should be a polymere of oxygen, and be represented by 0,=(000). The replacement of one equivalent of oxygen by one of sulphur, would yield sulphurous acid gas (OOS), and a complete metalepsis would give rise to (SSS). The first compound is probably the ozone of Schönbein, which the late researches of Marignac and de la Rive have shown to be in reality only oxygen in a peculiarly modified form, since pure dry oxygen gas, by the action of the electrical spark, acquires the peculiar odor and chemical properties which distinguish ozone. The most characteristic of these are, its peculiar odor and its power of discharging vegetable colors, in both of which is seen such a close resemblance to sulphurous acid gas, as at once to suggest a similarity. If we regard sulphur in the form which is known to us, as having the composition (SSS), and consisting of three equivalents combined in one, the density of its vapor is no longer an anomaly, as the sulphur-vapor is condensed to one-third of its normal bulk, and its equivalent number being 16×3=48, its atomic volume is 7-2135, or the same as that of oxygen gas. The difficulty is completely solved in a manner which is accordant with well-admitted principles. In connection with the similarity between ozone and sulphur here advanced, it is worthy of notice that the odor of sulphur when warmed or rubbed, which is similar to, and often confounded with that of sulphurous acid gas, although really distinct, is strikingly like the odor produced by the electrical discharge; indeed this last, which is now known to be due to the formation of ozone, is universally described as a sulphurous smell. Such resemblances as this may seem trivial; but when we consider the close likeness between the odors of chlorine, bromine, iodine and their compounds with each other, on the one hand, and those of phosphorus and arsenic on the other, we are constrained to admit that the effects produced by these bodies on the nerves of smell, have an intimate and as yet but imperfectly understood relation to their chemical properties. As to selenium, I am not aware that the density of its vapor has ever been determined, but from that of the solid it appears probable that it as well as tellurium has a triple molecule. The compound described as Se O may belong to a type which is seen in anhydrous sulphuric acid (SO), in which case its formula will be (Se, O,), but from its volatility and pungent odor, it is perhaps referable to the previous form, and will then be (SeO3); hybrid combinations of this sort are not unfrequent. In the other exception referred to, we find that while the density of the vapors of arsenic and phosphorus is such that their volume is identical with that of oxygen, nitrogen gas is represented by two volumes, taking oxygen as unity; and that consequently while the calculated atomic volumes of gaseous phosphorus and arsenic are 7.2, that of nitrogen gas is 14.4-; in other words, its state of condensation is only one-half that of the others. It has already been suggested that elementary nitrogen is probably unknown to us, and that the gas which is left when the oxygen is removed from the atmosphere, is an amid whose formula is (NN), corresponding like all similar combinations to four volumes; the equivalent of nitrogen being taken at 14, while that of oxygen is 8. Two equivalents of nitrogen being thus expanded to four volumes, the density is of course just one-half of that which corresponds to the normal one, and multiplying the observed density by 2, we find that the real specific gravity of gaseous elementary nitrogen should be 1.944; its combining volume identical with that of oxygen, and the volume of its atom, like that of phosphorus and arsenic, 72. If it existed in the *By hybrids, M. Laurent has designated a class of compounds, which to the atomistical chemist present no small difficulties. Such as these, are many combinations of the mineral kingdom where three or four metals may exist in varying proportions in a sulphuret, (e. g. S(Cu FZn) 2,) or as carbonates in CO3 (Mg Fe Ča) 2. The proportions of these are often so variable, as to give rise to the most improbable formulas in attempting to represent them after the Berzelian system of notation. The consideration of such cases as these has induced M. Laurent to admit in these hybrid combinations, "a divisibility of atoms to which he assigns no limits." (See this Journal, ii ser., iv, 405, v, 405, Gerhardt on the Atomic Volume of some Minerals of the Regular System, and Laurent on Silicates.) same state of condensation as solid phosphorus, its specific gravity would be 790, water being 1000. M. Laurent in a late valuable memoir,* has made some very important suggestions as to chemical classification, which if properly carried out, will enable us ere long to reduce the immense number of combinations to a few simple and well defined types. Water (H, O) he not only regards as the primitive type of all the oxyds (M, O) and (M3, Ó), of the hydrates (MH)O, compounds like (KZn)O, and the corresponding sulphur compounds H, S, M, S, (MH)S, but going still farther, reduces the alcohols to the same form. Spirit of wine, which is a monobasic salinet compound capable of changing an equivalent of hydrogen for one of metal, e. g. C,(H, K)Ō, is made the type of the vinic acids, in which the bibasic salt water has one of its atoms of hydrogen replaced by the elements of alcohol minus an equivalent of hydrogen and one of oxygen, while hydric ether corresponds to the neutral compounds of the bibasic acids, in which both equivalents of hydrogen are replaced by the same elements. Thus C2H ̧O-HO=Et, we have2 Water, Alcohol, Ether, H, O. It appears to me that this view is susceptible of still farther extension and that we may include in the same type all those saline combinations (acids) which contain oxygen. For example, the hypochlorites are represented as having the formula CI O,MO= CI MO,, or in the French notation (Cl M) O, the acid being then (Cl H)O, a monobasic acid which corresponds to water in which Cl replaces H. The so-called anhydrous hypochlorous acid of M. Pelouze, obtained by the action of dry chlorine upon oxyd of mercury, is the result of a complete substitution. In the same manner nitric acid (NHO,), is a monobasic salt corresponding to water in which NO, is substituted for H; the capacity of the elements NO, to replace H is abundantly exemplified in the modern history of organic compounds. We have then, Recherches sur les combinaisons azotés, Ann. de Ch. et de Phys. for November, 1846. As the words salt and saline are several times used in this article, in an acceptation somewhat different from the ordinary one, it may be well to observe, that with M. Gerhardt I designate as a salt any compound which contains hydrogen replaceable by a metal, or the metallic derivatives of that compound; saline hydrogen is that replaceable hydrogen. I have sometimes used for convenience the term salt, meaning the hydrogen salt as synonymous with acid, which indeed it is in the ordinary acceptation of the latter. It is time however that the name acid as a generic one, were banished from the science, and that it were restricted merely to sensible qualities, for hydrate of potash, water, sugar and alcohol are as really hydrogen salts as nitric, sulphuric or phosphoric acids—while many compounds possessing acid reactions, are chemically indifferent. SECOND SERIES, Vol. VI, No. 17.-Sept., 1848. 23 |