Page:Scientific Papers of Josiah Willard Gibbs.djvu/470

434 I regret that I have been obliged to delay my writing so long. I presume that you would have preferred to have me reply more promptly and more briefly. But the matter did not seem to be capable of being dispatched in few words.

One might easily economize in letters in the formulae by referring densities ($$\gamma$$) and potentials ($$\mu$$) to equivalent or molecular weights, as you have done, but I thought I was more sure to be understood with the notations which I have used. Moreover, since the molecular weight is often the doubtful point in the whole problem, there is a certain advantage in bringing it in explicitly rather than implicitly, so that we can see at a glance how a change in our assumptions in regard to the molecules will affect the measurable quantities.

Yours, very sincerely,