l66 ABSOLUTE ATOMIC WEIGHT. 



care and at very considerable length, shown that the deter- 

 minations of Stas are conflicting and false in themselves, 

 not even complying with the/>.s/ and fundamental condition 

 of all analytical work, to give ratios (or percentages) inde- 

 pendent of the amount of matter operated upon, I shall not 

 devote any great space in this volume to the fossil chemical 

 errors of Stas. 



We shall rather show the utter falsity of the pretended 

 high concordance of the determinations of Stas in one of 

 the subsequent chapters, after having shown once again, 

 that they really do not even approach to a constant value, 

 but vary greatly with the amount of substance operated upon. 



Density Determinations by Leduc. 



Apparently very accurate density determinations have 

 been made by Leduc of Paris, both for nitrogen and for 

 oxygen, which fully corroborate the results obtained earlier 

 by Lord Rayleigh. 



But this apparently excellent laboratory work by Leduc 

 is mixed up with such absurdities and such a lack of knowl- 

 edge of the simplest general principles of chemical science, 

 that I confess to a doubt about the value even of the experi- 

 mental work. 



The Comptes Rendus (Tome 123, p. 807; 1896), give as 

 the results of the actual weighings of Leduc the following in 

 grammes per liter. We add the quotient obtained by our- 

 selves per unit of standard atomic weighty in dividing the 

 oxygen value by 16, the nitrogen value by 14. 



Per Standard 

 Grammes per Liter. Unit of At. Weight. 



Oxygen, 1.42 93 0.08 933 i 



Nitrogen, 1.25 07 0.08 933 5 



To the fifth place, these quotients are identical. 



This proves that the densities and hence also the atomic 

 weights of nitrogen and oxygen are exactly commensura- 

 ble, being in the exact proportion of the numbers 14 to 16, 

 within the errors of determination (to five places full). 



