Multiple Proportions of the Atomic Weights. 67 



On the Multiple Proportions of the Atomic Weights of 

 Elementary Substances in relation to the unit of 

 Hydrogen. By Henry Wilde, F.R.S. 



(Received December nth, 1894..) 



A recent pronouncement by the noble President of the 

 British Association at Oxford in the course of his address 

 that, " there is not in the facts, the faintest foundation for the 

 theory that the atomic weights of elementary substances 

 are multiples of the weight of hydrogen," induces me to refer 

 to the paper which I read before this Society in the year 

 1878* On the Origin of Elementary Substances and on some 

 New Relations of their Atomic Weights, proving that such 

 multiple relations actually subsist. 



Reference to this paper, with a recapitulation of the 

 leading facts contained therein, is all the more desirable at 

 the present time, as some of my views have been modified 

 by subsequent investigators, without advancing much 

 beyond what had already been accomplished ; while, in 

 other instances, there has been a distinct retrogression from 

 the strong position which chemical philosophy had attained 

 more than forty years ago. 



In order that a connected view of the observations I 

 have to make may be obtained, I will summarise very 

 briefly the hypothesis from which the multiple proportions 

 of the atomic weights of the elements have been established. 

 I will also reproduce several tables of atomic weights of 

 the elements and their classification, as representative of 

 chemical knowledge and opinion of the present time. 



Starting from the nebular hypothesis of the successive 

 condensations of a primordial substance into planetary 

 systems in definite proportions, as indicated by Bode's law 



* Proceedings of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, Vol. 17, 

 April, 1878— Memoirs of the Society Vol 9, 1883, Vol. 10, 1887. 



