INTRODUCTION.
If I had strictly followed the plan I at first laid down for the conduct of this work, I would have confined myself, in the Tables and accompanying observations which compose this Second Part, to short definitions of the several known acids, and abridged accounts of the processes by which they are obtainable, with a mere nomenclature or enumeration of the neutral salts which result from the combination of these acids with the various salifiable bases. But I afterwards found that the addition of similar Tables of all the simple substances which enter into the composition of the acids and oxyds, together with the various possible combinations of these elements, would add greatly to the utility of this work, without being any great increase to its size. These additions, which are all contained in the twelve first sections of this Part, and the Tables annexed to these, form a kind of recapitulation of the first fifteen Chapters of the First Part: The rest of the Tables and Sections contain all the saline combinations.
It must be very apparent that, in this Part of the Work, I have borrowed greatly from what has been already published by Mr de Morveau in the First Volume of the Encyclopedie par ordre des Matières. I could hardly have discovered a better source of information, especially when the difficulty of consulting books in foreign languages is considered. I make this general acknowledgment on purpose to save the trouble of references to Mr de Morveau's work in the course of the following part of mine.