58 'JOURNAIv OF THE 



elite (Ber. deutsch. chem. Ges. XXII. 1175.) when 

 the question was being- discussed between Meyer and 

 Seubert, Ostwald and himself. 



This was six years ago. The matter has not been 

 much discussed in the mean time. Still the desired 

 result has been partially attained. Many chemists 

 seem to have adopted the oxyg-en standard and it is 

 made use of in most recent work in this line. Some 

 have sDoken of this as only a temporary abandonment 

 of the \ydrog-en standard. This can be true only m 

 case the chief argument for the oxygen standard ceases 

 to be valid. This aro-ument is, that, in the majority of 

 cases the atomic weight determinations involve combi- 

 nations with oxvgen and hence the use of its atomic 

 weight in calculations. This weight should by all 

 means be hxed and not dependent upon determin- 

 ations of the ratio to hydrogen or any thing else, to be 

 upset every few years by new and "more accurate" 

 determinations. Only in two cases can hydrogen re- 

 place oxygen as the standard. First, in case suitable 

 compounds of the various elements and hydrogen can 

 be obtained. This does not seem very probable. The 

 second case is where absolute accuracy of determina- 

 tion is conceded as impossible and the final atomic 

 weights can be settled upon by some methods of math- 

 ematical calculation. Such methods have been sug- 

 gested but their adoption does not seem probable. It 

 Ts scarcely necessary to point out that the use of O as 

 16 or O as 15.9G would make a very marked difference 

 in the cases of elements of high atomic weights— sev- 

 eral integers for uranium for instance. Oxygen as 16 

 must remain the standard for the present and it will 

 be so considered in the remaining portion of this paper 

 and uniformity in this regard is very earnestly to be 



