184 STASIAN FOLLY AND FRAUD. 



These are to-day undoubtedly those of the Smithsonian 

 Institution, declared to be the most probable by the Secre- 

 tary thereof, published in fullest form at the expense of the 

 Smithsonian fund, entrusted to the American Congress for 

 the Increase and Diffusion of KNOWLEDGE among men "per 

 orbem," and sent out as registered mail matter at the 

 expense of the entire American people. 



These values are, furthermore, produced in the scientific 

 bureaus maintained at Washington by the taxes put upon the 

 American people. In this instance, the chief responsible 

 for this work, is the Secretary of the Interior, under whose 

 control the Geological Survey of the United States is placed 

 by law. The real (ostensibly the only) author is the Chief 

 Chemist of that Survey, Frank Wigglesworth Clarke. 



We shall then, for this one instance, use the final data 

 proclaimed by the authority of the Smithsonian Institution, 

 as elaborated in and by the Department of the Interior in 

 one of its highest scientific bureaus, and as they are blindly 

 accepted by the American Chemical Society, and made use 

 of in the enormous establishments of this Government in 

 the collection of imports, in the Department of Agriculture 

 and the numerous Experiment Stations of this Department. 



These very data, the false atomic weights of Clarke and 

 the Smithsonian Institution, are now being officially forced 

 upon the Committee revising the U. S. Pharmacopoeia for 

 adoption as standards in this work. 



If these final data, used in all these government estab- 

 lishments of a supposed scientific or technical nature are 

 false, then all chemical analyses made in these institutions, 

 which are supported at the cost of many millions of dollars 

 annually to the American people, w///, as a matter of necessity 

 be falsified by these false data for even the best made 

 chemical analysis will be so falsified if the data used for 

 their reduction by calculation, are false. 



With this matter thoroughly understood, I shall now 

 proceed to the work of testing the value given to the atomic 

 weight of nitrogen by chemical means, according to the com- 

 mon method of calculating this atomic weight in every single 

 analysis or determination directly from the analytical ratio- 



