ELISHA MITCHELL SCIENTIFIC SOCIETY. 



103 



TABLE No,. I— Continued. 



I cannot think that the.se authors really mean this as in any 

 way a plea for oxygen=15.96. It must be intended to show the 

 ridiculous nature of the grounds upon which Front's Hypothe- 

 sis has been based. Certainly they are correct in their deduc- 

 tion that "to attempt to correct the atomic weights by them (■/. e., 

 these regularities) would be just as incorrect as to round them off 

 into whole numbers." With such glaring and persistent excep- 

 tions as chlorine, chromium, copper, strontium, gold and others, 

 the hypothesis of Front must fail to take its place as a law, since 

 no law could be accepted with so large a percentage of exceptions. 



It is not necessary to discuss the modifications of Front's Hy- 

 pothesis which have been proposed — the half-atom or fourth- 

 atom of hvdrogen as unit, etc. Such changes really do away with 

 all meaning to the hypothesis, and the valuable idea which 

 Meyer and Seubert acknowledge may lie concealed in it, is lost. 



That the hypothesis is still doing yeoman's service to science 

 is shown by the number of new determinations, within the past 

 two years, of the ratio between hydrogen and oxygen. It is 



