The other apparatus may be adequate, the reagents of the utmost purity, the methods of the best, and the manipulations careful, delicate, and conscientious; but if the balance and weights are not accurate, and not carefully taken care of, the labor and time expended on the analysis will largely go for naught. The balance and weights should, therefore, be regarded with a feeling akin to reverence, and the balance case looked upon, so to speak, as a sanctum sanctorum.

--H. S. Washington