OUR METHOD OF DETERMINATION. >Jl 



Not having had the opportunity of weighing, say at least 

 20 such coins, fresh from the mint, I cannot state the actual 

 tolerance. I think it must amount to 5 mgrs. 



Now, by Law, each Half Eagle is to weigh 129 grains, 

 that is (to nearest milligramme) 8.359 grammes. 



Our estimate, based upon 20 coins each of 1881 and 1897, 

 gave us 8.361 or 2 mgr. in excess of the mean legal weight. 

 I think we have done well enough. It corresponds to 0.02 

 on an atomic weight of 83. 



But really, we did not determine the weight directly. 

 Direct means were all low, for iSSi they were 24 mgrs. 

 below the mean for 1897. 



These two years gave us the average rate of -wear or 

 abrasion. We had no new coin, fresh from the mint. We 

 supposed that the rate from iSSi to 1897 might be relied on 

 as reasonably true and hence as such beyond our actual 

 observation, from 1897 to the present. That gave us the 

 weight 8.361 at the mint; the law says it shall be 8.359. 



We think there is no flaw in this process beyond the 

 desirability of larger numbers of coin. That desirability we 

 admit. In fact, we admit it very much. 



Criminal Extrapolation. 



I am sorry to inform my readers, that they have been 

 participants in a great scientific crime, the crime of Extra- 

 polation. 



Possibly they have not felt their scientific conscience 

 shiver; that would be too bad, according to the opinion of 

 the great Stasian critics, referred to by the Olla Podrida 

 maker for the Smithsonian Institution, on page 6 of his 

 variable Constants of 1897. 



This scientific crime of extrapolation consists in carry- 

 ing experimental data beyond the immediate field for which 

 they have been established. 



Thus Stas claims he found 14.04 for nitrogen, using from 

 about 100 to 400 grammes of silver, converting it to nitrate, 

 fused and dried. As a matter of fact (True Atomic Weights, 



