BERTHOLLET, Claude Louis, one of the most distinguished chemists of the French school, was born at TaUoire, near Annecy, in Savoy, in 1748. He studied first at Chambery, and subsequently at Turin, where he took his degree as a physician. In 1772 he settled at Paris, and soon became the medical attendant of Philip, duke of Orleans. By the publication of a volume of chemical essays, he gained such reputation that he was admitted in 1781 into the Académie des Sciences. He was appointed Government superintendent of the establishment for the improvement of dyeing; and in 1791 he published his essay Sur la Teinture, a work that first systematized and chemically explained the principles of the art. It was translated into English by Dr William Hamilton, 1794. Berthollet early adopted the chemical views of Lavoisier, and took part with him in the formation of a new system of chemical nomenclature. He confirmed and extended the discoveries of Priestley on ammonia, discovered fulminating silver, and greatly extended our knowledge of the dephlogisticated marine acid of Scheele, for which the name of oxymuriatic acid was then proposed, and which is now termed chlorine. It was he who in 1785 first proposed to apply it to bleaching. He discovered the remarkable salt now called chlorate of potash; and we owe to him also an excellent essay on the chemical constitution of soaps. Berthollet’s contributions to chemistry are scattered through the pages of the Journal de Physique, Annales de Chimie, Mémoires de VInstitut, and Mémoires d’Arceuil. At the commencement of the French Revolution the scarcity of saltpetre for the manufacture of gunpowder was much felt; and Berthollet was placed at the head of a commission for improving the processes for obtaining and purifying this important ...