202 STASIAN FOLLY AND FRAUD. 



constituents, as demanded by Clarke on page 70 and 

 throughout his own variable Constants of 1897. 



But, upon serious reflection, I dare not even make this 

 correction of my stupid error. 



For, how can I, a poor, independent investigator, know 

 without special revelation from the Exact Scientists of our 

 National Government, how much this change in weight 

 amounts to in the synthesis of silver nitrate? 



It is very true, I have carefully copied the Clarkian 

 values for silver and oxygen, and used the sum 154.745 to 

 represent Ag Os in the silver nitrate in all my calcu- 

 lations. 



May not this be also wrong? Although the Chief Chemist 

 Clarke, has used that same value himself he may ere this 

 have discovered how much the one silver and three oxygen 

 in silver nitrate, differ in weight from the sum of their 

 weights in the free and uncombined state, and may it not be 

 that he simply has not yet through the Smithsonian Press 

 and the Journal of the American Chemical Society informed 

 the expectant chemical world of the precise amount? 



As I now, at last, come to grasp the full import of the 

 overthrow of our old axiom of the constancy of weight of 

 matter, irrespective of chemical combination I think we 

 are really entirely at the end of all possible atomic weight 

 determinations. 



If the sum of the weights of the constituents is no longer, 

 according to Clarke, to be taken as the weight of the 

 compound, all atomic weight determinations must cease, 

 because they become both absurd and impossible. 



Every new compound we might draw upon, would present 

 us another unknown change in weight, and hence we would 

 have a system of indeterminate equations. 



If Clarke is right as of course he must be, as Imperial- 

 istic Chemist for the United States of America, by position 

 and by his assumption and by the recognition his official 

 station secured from the American Chemical Society all 

 atomic weight determinations must cease, having become 

 impossible. 



