PROCEEDINGS 



OF THE 



AMEHICAN ACADEMY 



OF 



AETS AND SCIENCES. 



VOL. XVII. 

 PAPERS READ BEFORE THE ACADEMY. 



I. 



CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE CHEMICAL LABORA- 

 TORY OF HARVARD COLLEGE. 



By Josiah Parsons Cooke, Director. 



Presented May 11, 1881. 



Introduction. 



In a paper presented to the Academy, and published in its proceed- 

 ings, Vol. XIII., page 1, we gave the results of our investigation of 

 the haloid compounds of antimony up to that time, including a re- 

 vision of the atomic weight of this element. We did not directly 

 answer the criticism which this paper called forth, except so far as 

 to present to the Academy, March 10, 1880, and to publish in these 

 Proceedings, Vol. XV., jDage 251, a preliminary notice of experiments 

 then in progress which furnished the best possible answer to the un- 

 founded assumptions of the critic. We also gave brief notices of our 

 work from time to time in the American Journal of Science. But now 

 that the work is ended for the present (or at least must be suspended 

 for a considerable period), we propose to bring the results together in 

 the present paper. 



I. The Oxidation of Hydrochloric Acid Solutions of 

 Antimony in the Atmosphere. 



In our first paper (loc. cit., page 21) we made the following inci- 

 dental observation, in explanation of certain precautions which we 



VOL. XVII. (n. S. IX.) 1 



