a day's serious illness. In the summer of 1828, he went to Geneva and appeared to suffer what was to him an unusual degree of fatigue; on great bodily exertion there was a perceptible diminution of strength, and symptoms of age appeared to come upon him, which contrasted strongly with the freedom from complaints he had hitherto enjoyed.

The Commitee of Finance having recommended to the Government the abolition of the Board of Longitude, a bill was passed to that effect, permitting the Admiralty to retain the officer entrusted with the calculations of the Nautical Almanack: this occured during the time that Dr. Young was abroad, but he continued to execute these duties. Whether the measure was well or ill founded we shall not stay to inquire, but it produced great heart-burnings and discontent among those scientific men who considered themselves or their friends treated. unhandsomely, as well as illiberally, in the manner in which their services had been dispensed with. It appears that the occasional assistance of men of science was found to be so necessary to many departments connected with the Admiralty, that it was found expedient to form a new council of three members for the performance of duties which had before devolved on the Board of Longitude, and for this purpose Dr. Young, Captain Sabine, and Mr. Faraday, were appointed..

The consequence of this change involved Dr. Young in more labor than his declining state of health rendered him competent to perform without injury, and exacerbated a complaint which must have been long, though insensibly, in progress, but which now was bringing him rapidly to a state of extreme debility. From the month of Febuary 1829, his illness continued with some slight variations, but he was gradually sinking into greater and greater weakness till the morning of the 10th of May, when he expired without a struggle, having hardly completed his fifty sixth year. He was attended through his illness by his friends Dr. Chambers and Dr. Nevinson. The disease proved to be an ossification of the aorta, and every appearance indicated an advance of age, not brought on probably by the natural course of time, nor even by constitutional formation, but by unwearied and incessant labor of the mind from the earliest days of infancy. His remains were deposited in a vault in the church of Farnborough, Kent.

It has been truly said of this extraordinary man, that as a scholar, physician, a linguist, an antiquary, a mathematician, and philosopher,

he has added to almost every department of human knowledge that which will be remembered to after times. In the eloquent eulogy pronounced by Mr. Davies Gilbert from the Chair of the Royal Society it is observed, that he came into the world with a confidence in his own talents, growing out of an expectation of excellence entertained in common by all his friends, which expectation was more than realized in the progress of his future life. The multiplied objects which he pursued were carried to such an extent, that each might have been supposed to have exclusivly occupied the full powers of his mind; knowledge in the abstract, the most enlarged generalizations, and the most minute and intricate details, were equally effected by him; but he had most pleasure in that which appeared to be most difficult of investigation.' 'The example (says Mr. Gilbert) is only to be followed by those of equal perseverance,' the concentration of research within the limits of some defined portion of science, is rather to be recommended than the endeavor to embrace the whole.

Dr. Young's opinion on this subject is stated by his biographer to have been, that it was probably most advantageous to mankind that the researches of some inquirers should be concentrated within a given compass, but that others should pass more rapidly through a wider range-that the faculties of the mind were more exercised, and probably rendered stronger, by going beyond the rudiments and overcoming the great elementary difficulties of a variety of studies, than by employing the same number of hours in any one pursuit that the doctrine of the division of labor, however applicable to material product, was not so to intellect, and that it went to reduce the dignity of man in the scale of rational existence. thought it impossible to foresee the capabilities of improvement in any science, so much of accident having led to the most important discoveries, that no man could say what might be the comparative advantage of any one study rather than that of another; and though he would scarcely have recommended the plan of his own as the model of those of others, he still was satisfied in the course which he had pursued.'

It has been said that the powers of the imagination were the only qualities of which Dr. Young's mind was destitute; the writer of this memoir thinks this want at least doubtful from the highly poetical cast of some of his early Greek translations, and is of opinion that it might with more justice have been said that he never cultivated the talent of throwing a brilliancy on objects which he had as

certained did not belong to them,' and that his entire devotion to the simple truth, on all occasions, made him averse to the slightest degree of exaggeration, or even of coloring; and that, whether gifted or not with imagination, Dr. Young would on principle, have abstained from its indulgence.

In all the relations of private life, Dr. Young was as exemplary as his talents were great, and his whole career was one unbending course of usefulness and rectitude.

ART. III.-An Essay on Chemical Nomenclature, prefixed to the treatise on Chemistry; by J. J. BERZELIUS. Translated from the French, with notes, by A. D. BACHE, Prof. of Nat. Philos. and Chem. in the University of Pennsylvania.

*

THE nomenclature explained in this essay, is the language in which are recorded the labors of the most experienced chemist of our day, the author of a work rich in the philosophy as in the details of chemical science. It has also become, to a certain extent, the language of one of the most industrious portions of the chemical community, the chemists of Germany. By the French translation, under the revision of Berzelius, of his Treatise on Chemistry, the system will be placed more immediately before the chemists of France, and will be introduced to the knowledge of many in England and in this country, who may not heretofore have had access to its stores in the original, or in the German translation.

I have thought that by clothing this essay in an English dress and by adding notes explanatory of the views of the author, as developed in his work, some of the difficulties may be removed which must attend the study by those used to a very different nomenclature; and that thus an examination of the system may be induced. If even such a result should not be attained, the study of the work will, it is hoped, be facilitated; a study which cannot fail to afford an adequate reward for any pains which may be taken in its prosecution.

The notes are chiefly illustrative of the text; they attempt to show the views of the author when differing from those to which we

* The present translation is made, after correcting the errors pointed out by the author, in his list of errata for the first volume of the French translation, which volume he denounced, as being incorrect; the second volume was translated by another person, under the direction of Prof. Berzelius, and to this volume the corrections for the first were appended. With these emendations, it was virtually adopted by the author.

are accustomed, and to give such reasons for them as he has recorded in the pages of his work.

Essay of Berzelius on the Nomenclature of Chemistry.

This article on the nomenclature of Chemistry by which my Elements are prefaced, is addressed to those who have made some progress in the science and are therefore more or less accustomed to a different system. Beginners will become acquainted with the nomenclature as they advance in their course.

Every science requires a systematic nomenclature. That this is especially the case in relation to Chemistry, has been fully proved by the confusion which prevailed before the adoption of the happy idea of De Morveau. The nomenclature which has been in use since 1780 is the fruit of the labors of De Morveau, directed and aided by Lavoisier, Berthollet, and Fourcroy. The great advantage of this system is to be found in the fact, that as soon as we are made acquainted with the composition of a body we can tell its name without having had previously any knowledge of it: thus the memory is not burthened with names. A systematic nomenclature is, moreover, the expression of a theory; so that while theory assigns a name, the name expresses the theory. To this connection of nomenclature and theory the objection has been urged that the nomenclature must undergo changes whenever theories change, which would not be the case if names were arbitrary. Since, however, all changes of theory tend towards greater simplicity, such a change of nomenclature facilitates, instead of retarding the advance of science. In general nothing which tends to render any of the parts of a science stationary can be beneficial to it; all its parts should advance as discovery and information multiply. Changes have been made from time to time, in the nomenclature of Guyton De Morveau, not in accordance with its fundamental principles, and additions have been made to it which do not harmonize with the rest of the system. Authors have adopted names accidentally given to new substances, and as a consequence the nomenclature of Chemistry has by degrees become unwieldy and ill adapted to express many new and even some well known compounds. In order, therefore, to convey my ideas, it was necessary to devise a nomenclature which should be appropriate and at the same time sufficiently analogous to that now used in France, to be easily understood by those accustomed to that system. This nomenclature I shall explain as briefly as possible.

SIMPLE SUBSTANCES.

I. METALLOIDS.(1) (Simple non metallic bodies, all electro

NOMENCLATURE OF BINARY COMPOUNDS.

The names of the binary combinations are formed by giving to one of the components the termination ide, or uret, forming the sub

(1) Metalloid, a non-metallic body. On the subject of this class, Berzelius remarks: "certain simple substances, characterized by peculiar and well marked properties, are called metals; others do not possess these characters. Hence the division into metallic and non-metallic bodies; the latter class I call by the name of metalloids. This division has a connexion with the chemical and electro-chemical relations of bodies, since the metalloids, and their combinations with oxygen, always tend to the positive pole, and consequently are electro-negative. Many of the metals are likewise electro-negative, and if we undertake to draw the line between the two classes, it will be found that the distinctive characters are so gradu. ally lost, that certain bodies may, with as much propriety, be ranked with the one as the other class."

This term, metalloid, from its derivation, (uéra220v, a metal, and sidos, likeness,) would seem to mean a body like a metal, and in this sense there was an attempt made to introduce it into chemical nomenclature, to denote the metallic radical of an alkali, &c. The sense in which our author has chosen to employ it is exactly the reverse of this, and should be well fixed in the memory before proceeding. Remarks in relation to the order in which the substances in this table are arranged, will be found in note third.-Trans.

(2) Better known to the English and American chemist as Columbium.—Trans.”