232 
Analyses of Books. 
[April, 
On the Discovery of the Periodic Law, and on Relations among 
the Atomic Weights. By John A. R. Newlands, F.C.S., , 
&c. London : E. and F. N. Spon. 
We have repeatedly felt it our duty to join in attempts for vindi- 
cating the claims of discoverers who have been overlooked. 
Thus we have persistently asserted the right of Dr. G. Walker 
to be regarded as the father of Sanitary Reform. In like manner 
we must now join in recognising Mr. Newlands as the originator i 
of what is now known as the “ periodic law.” We were un- i 
pleasantly surprised, not long ago, when medals were awarded 
to MM. Mendelejeff and Lothar Meyer, to find that the claims of 
Mr. Newlands were treated, it would seem, with the “ conspiracy : 
of silence.” Yet the case lies, it would seem, in a nut-shell. 
Mr. Newlands’s priority is beyond all dispute. As early as 1864 • 
he gave, in the “ Chemical News,” a list of all the elements then 
known in the order of their atomic weights, no similar table 1 
having ever before been published. In another accompanying 
table he gave the more important elements arranged horizontally ; 
in the order of their atomic weights, with blanks corresponding 
to some of the missing members of various groups. “ In the 
trivalent group, beginning with boron, there was a blank next be- 
low zinc, since filled by gallium, and another blank immediately 
below cadmium, since filled by indium.” In the group contain- . 
ing carbon, silicon, titanium, and tin, it was pointed out that an 
element of the atomic weight 73 was wanting. This is the very 
same missing element which M. Mendelejeff subsequently fore- i| 
told under the provisional name of eka-silicium. 
Thus the discovery for which the Russian chemist has been so 
much applauded — the prediction of an element as yet unseen, 1 
with its approximate atomic weight and its place with relation to r 
other elements — was made and published by Mr. Newlands, at 
least four years before him. 
We do not for a moment suppose that Mendelejeff obtained 1 
the fundamental idea of his “ periodic law ” from reading the ' 
communications of Mr. Newlands to the “ Chemical News.” i\ 
On the other hand, it seems to us a strong confirmation of the I 
value of this arrangement that it should thus have independently | 
suggested itself to two different minds. Yet certainly Mr. New- 
lands, as the earlier discoverer and revealer, merits no less 
honour. 
To proceed : in the “ Chemical News ” of August 20th, 1864, i 
Mr. Newlands announced the existence of a simple relation t 
among the elements when arranged in the natural order of their 1 
atomic weights, so that the eighth element, reckoning from any j 
given one, was a kind of repetition of the first. Again, in the F 
“ Chemical News ” for August 18th and 25th of the same year, i 
he published a complete horizontal arrangement of the elements 1 
