August 17, 1900.] 



SCIENCE. 



247 



chemistry. Favorable responses were made 

 and twenty different committees appointed. 

 There were from America two (American 

 Chemical Society and American Academy 

 of Arts and Sciences) ; Belgium, two ; Ger- 

 many, five ; England, one ; Holland, one ; 

 Japan, one ; Italy, one ; Austro- Hungary, 

 four; Eussia,one; Sweden, one; Switzerland, 

 one. Denmark, France and Norway alone 

 made no response to the overtures. Alto- 

 gether there were fifty-six members of the 

 international committee. 



On December 15, 1899, a circular was ad- 

 dressed to these members asking for opinions 

 upon three points : 



1. Shall O = 16 be adopted as the stand- 

 ard of atomic weights ? 



2. To how many decimal places shall the 

 atomic weights be given ? 



3. Is a smaller permanent committee on 

 atomic weights desirable ? 



Forty-nine replies were received. As re- 

 gards the standard, forty favored = 16, 

 seven H=l, while Cannizzaro desired 

 both, and Fresenius preferring = 16 

 would be satisfied with either. It is inter- 

 esting to note that six of the votes for 

 H = 1 were German, six other Germans 

 voting for = 16. The only other vote for 

 H = 1 was from Professor Mallet. Of the 

 other Americans Eichards, Gibbs, Eemsen 

 and Smith, voted for = 16, while Clarke 

 and Morley made no reply. 



On the second point opinions differed so 

 widely, that the committee was constrained 

 to leave the decision to the smaller perma- 

 nent international committee to be later 

 appointed. Of the Americans, Richards, 

 Gibbs and Remsen favor stating one figure 

 which is uncertain by more than a unit, 

 while Smith and Mallet would give only so 

 many decimals tl^at the last figure should 

 be correct to less than half a unit. 



Views were practically unanimous in 

 favor of a small permanent committee and 

 the committee recommended the appoint- 



ment of a permanent committee of three 

 chemists who have given special attention 

 to the subject of atomic weights. 



In conclusion the committee express a 

 desire to receive the opinions of chemists 

 outside of the international committee as 

 to their preferences for the standard. Such 

 replies should be sent before November 

 15th, to Professor Landolt, Berlin, K. W. 

 Bunsenstrasse, 1. 



In this connection it is interesting to 

 note that the work of this committee is the 

 final outcome of an agitation which was be- 

 gun in this country in 1889 by Dr. F. P. 

 Venable in a paper published in the Journal 

 of Analytical Chemistnj (3 : 48), and which 

 was taken up the following year by Dr. 

 Brauner, of Prague, and very warmly dis- 

 cussed before the German Chemical Society 

 by Ostwald, V. Meyer, Seubert and Brauner. 

 At that time Meyer and Seubert advocated 

 H = 1 for the standard and this view has 

 had many supporters in Germany but few 

 elsewhere. The argument in its favor 

 seems to be the impossibility from a didac- 

 tic standpoint of taking sixteen as a unit. 

 In his first paper Venable pointed out 

 clearly the distinction between the idea of 

 standard and unit, showing that a standard 

 need not be a unit, and this view has been 

 generally adopted by most chemists outside 

 of Germany. 



J. L. H. 



THE FOSSIL SHELLS OF THE LOS ANGELES 

 TUNNEL CLAYS. 

 The detection of a species of Eadiolites, 

 by Mr. Homer Hamlin, in the clays perfor- 

 ated in the course of drifting the Third 

 Street tunnel in the city of Los Angeles is 

 a discovery of noteworthy importance by 

 reason of its bearing upon the question of 

 the geologic age of the region hereabout. 

 These clays, which will be more fully 

 described by Mr. Hamlin or myself when 

 the tunnel excavation is completed, have 



