On Chemical Equivalents. 



97 



The experimental verification of this most important law, oc- 

 cupied Richter from the year 1791 to the year li802, in which 

 period he published, in successive parts, a curious work, entitled 

 The Geometry of the Chemical Elements, or Principles of Ste- 

 chiometry. We might have expected greater accuracy in hi« 

 investigations, from the circumstance, that Dr. Wollaslon se- 

 lected his statement of the constituents of nitre, in preference to 

 those of all other chemists, in the construction of his admirable 

 table of chemical proportions. 



With indefatigable zeal Richter examined, by experiment, 

 each acid, in its relation to the bases, and then compared the 

 results with those given by calculation, presenting both in an ex- 

 tensive series of tables. 



It is curious that he does not seem to have been aware, that 

 all his tables might have been reduced into a single one, of 21 

 numbers, divided into two columns, by means of which, every 

 question relating to the included articles, might be solved by the 

 rule of tliree, or a sliding scale. The following table, computed 

 by Fischer from Richter's last tables, was inserted by the cele- 

 brated Berthollet in a note to his chemical statics. 



1 have added the two columns under oxygen, from which we 

 see at once, that with the exception of the bases lime, strontian, 

 and soda, and the acids carbonic, muriatic, sulphuric, nitric, ci- 

 tric, and tartaric; the numbers given by Richter do not form 

 tolerable approximations to the true proportions. The object of 

 tlic above taiiie was, to give directly the (luaiititics of acid and 

 alkali rc(|uisitc for nnitual saturation. For example, 1605, op- 

 posite to potash, is the {piaiititv of that alkali c(|uivalent to neu- 



Vol.r,7. No. 274. Zr/;. 1821'. N traliztf 



