1819.] Mr. Rice on the Weight of a Cubic Inch of Water. 339 
which would be compounded of all the preceding laws, must be 
very complicated ; we shall not, therefore, attempt to translate it 
into ordinary language. We have given it in the course of the 
memoir under a mathematical form, which permits us to examine 
all its consequences. We shall satisfy ourselves with remarking, 
that it is doubtless to the very complicated nature of this law 
that we must ascribe the little success of the attempts hitherto 
made to discover it. It is obvious that we can only arrive at it 
by studying apart each of the causes which contributes to the 
total effect. 
ArtTIcLeE II. 
On the Weight of a Cubic Inch of distilled Water ; and the Spect- 
fic Gravity of Atmospheric Air. By E, W. M. Rice, A.B. 
M.R.LA, 
(To Dr. Thomson.) 
SIR, Dublin, March 6, 1819, 
In the following paper I have endeavoured to deduce the true 
weight ofa cubic inch of water, and its specific gravity in rela- 
tion to atmospheric air, from a comparison of the French expe- 
riments, those made by Sir George Shuckburgh, and a theoretical 
view of the composition of water. In making the necessary 
corrections in Sir George’s actually experimental results, [have 
presumed to differ from the experimenter and Mr. Fletcher; as 
it appears to me that the data on which these corrections are 
founded cannot be supported in the present state of science. 
Should you esteem the object of this attempt so far accom- 
plished as to be worthy of publicity, your giving it a place in 
the Annals will much oblige, 
Yours very truly, 
E. W.M. Rice. 
On looking over the 49th volume of the Journal de Physique, 
it appeared to me that Lefevre Gineau’s experiments were con- 
ducted with so much attention that his determination of the 
weight of a volume of water could not be far from the truth ; 
and that the difference generally supposed to exist between his 
and Sir George Shuckburgh’s must be chiefly attributed to the 
imperfection of the data on which the French experiment was 
stated in English weights, and Sur George’s reduced to the mean 
temperature and pressure. | 
I think that, for the present, we may reckon the Paris pound 
at 32° Fahr. equal to 7560. English troy grains at 62°. This I 
have deduced from Tillet’s experiments ; as little confidence can 
be placed in the determinations made in 1742, from the rough- 
r¥2 
