176 STASIAN FOLLY AND FRAUD. 



point that can be actually determined by experiment, in our 

 curves. 



For 405 grammes, our rule deduced from Stas' own 

 work, Nos. i to 5 and 7, gives only 84 milligrammes as 

 the reduction to vacuum. 



The actual values used by Stas, for both the dried and the 

 fused nitrate, are 150 milligrammes. Here the error of Stas 

 in calculation amounts to 180 per cent. 



To obtain so great a reduction for the buoyancy of the 

 air, the barometric pressure must have been 54 inches for 

 ordinary temperatures, or the temperature 200 degrees below 

 zero for ordinary barometric pressure. 



I suppose that even the blind admirers of Stas do not 

 know of any cave or pit in the Laboratory of Stas four 

 thousand meters deep a sort of an inverted Mount Blanc; 

 nor will they pretend that Stas could have weighed his 

 wondrous synthetic silver nitrate at a temperature uncom- 

 fortably near the absolute zero. 



There is nothing to do but to admit the error of calcula- 

 tion committed by Stas. It is palpable. 



Such errors were never committed by Berzelius for he 

 properly looked upon this whole thing as a folly, as a 

 straining at gnats while swallowing camels. That even the 

 greatest analyst of modern times, as which we are demanded 

 to consider Stas, in one case out of eight, puffed up the 

 gnat to a good sized calf of a camel (No. 8), and in the 

 other made quite a full grown camel out of it (No. 6), 

 committing an error of 66 milligrammes in the weight 

 recorded and reprinted by his admiring re-calculators, is 

 quite astonishing. 



This error, at the end of our curves, we cannot permit to 

 remain. We shall mark on our diagrams the points (dry and 

 fused) for No. 6 exactly, as given by Stas and his great and 

 careful re-calculators ; but we shall mark them by the words 

 " false" or "error" and add the correct points obtained 

 by the correct values of reduction, which points we shall 

 mark true in this and related diagrams. See Plates I, II, III. 



From the analytical excess observed, we calculate in our 

 usual way the atomic weight, here of nitrogen. 



