Correspondence SIR EDWARD THORPE, C.B.,F.R.S. Dr. Hart sends this little note of a day spent in the company of the late S i r Edward Thorpe, in the hope that it may be o f interest to some of our readers. I n 1896 I went t o England t o sell my nitric acid condenser then just patented. I learned before leaving home that Dr. Morely had visited England and had not had a very pleasant visit, chiefly because he had taken no letters of introduction; so I provided several. Among these was one t o Professor Thorpe then chief chemist t o the British Government, with his office and laboratory a t Somerset House on the Thames Embankment. He was very kind and asked me to spend the next Sunday with them on the Thames. I met him a t the time and place appointed and was introduced t o Mrs. Thorpe, to his young lady secretary, whose name I have lost, and a nephew who was "very jolly, don't you know." We embarked on Professor Thorpe's steam launch which he managed himself. When noon came, the launch was tied t o a tree on the bank and we ate the lunch which Mrs. Thorpe had prepared in the cabin. I have forgotten how far we had gone when it came time t o return; but I know we had passed through several locks crowded with skiffs filled with young folks out for the day, among whom "Arry and Arriet" were much in evidence. It was a very jolly crowd and we enjoyed their chaff. All the necessary dishes, napkins, food, etc., had come in a hamper and this, after the launch had been safely housed, Professor Thorpe and I carried with us on the return trip on the Underground t o his home on Notting Hill where we ate supper a t 10 P.M. At that time Professor Thorpe was Secretary of the Chemical Society and I was Editor of the Journal of the American Chemical Society. As he was older and more experienced I learned much more from our conference on how to carry on such work than did he. He was trying then t o get the full names and not merely the initials of the members of the Chemical Society. Professor Thorpe was a man rather below the average height with a pleasant, rather shrewd face, and a pleasing personality. His letters to me subsequently, up t o the time of his death, were all written in longhand, precise, well worded, and very full. Some of them were quite long-as many as eight pages of note paper. I n this he followed the
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fashion of Professor Henry E. Armstrong and the late Dr. R. W. Raymond who followed the same practice during his whole life. Only untiring industry could have made such a habit possible. He was industrious and has left a record of which his friends may well feel proud.
"THE LAW OF AVOGADRO" T o the Editor: Let me call your attention t o an error, or a t least an ambiguity, in the article on "The Law of Avogadro" which appeared in the November number of the JOURNAL. The author of this article has attempted a so-called "deductive proof" of Avogadro's Hypothesis. It is thoroughly familiar t o all how this principle arises out of Gay-Lussac's Law of Combining Volumes and (as the author correctly points out) from the Law of Combining Weights. In the traditional development of this topic we are led to see that as a result of these two principles the number of molecules in equal volumes of different gases must be either equal or simple multiples of each other. Avogadro's Hypothesis, of course, merely fixes the choice on the first and simplest alternative. I n theauthor's "deductiveproof" theequation, VJV2 = nn/%lXN1/N2is used, where V,/V2, the ratio of combining volumes, and NI/N2, the ratio of total molecules reacting, are both whole numbers, whence, the author suggests, nz cannot be not equal t o n, (themumbers of molecules in equal volumes). The mathematical fallacy of this is apparent, however, for to fulfil the conditions i t is only required that nz = bnl, where b is any whole number, not necessarily 1. And this gets us nowhere with respect t o fundamental assumption of Avogadro's Hypothesis. Nonnrs W. RAKESTRAW OBERLINCOLLEGE, OBERLIN, OHIO
CAN YOU HELP US?
W e publish the following letter from Dr. Silverman in the ho$e that some of our readers may be able to supply the desired information. At the Los Angeles session of the Division of Chemical Education someone quoted Le Chatelier as having said, "Students are not re-
