One of these is the position of the line MN through the sun at F in which the plane of the orbit cuts some fundamental plane of reference, commonly the ecliptic. This is called the line of nodes, and its position is specified by the angle which it makes with some fixed line FX in the fundamental plane.
The metals may be arranged in a series according to their power of displacing one another in salt solutions, thus Cs, Rb, K, Na, Mg, Al, Mn, Zn, Cd, Tl, Fe, Co, Ni, Sn, Pb, (H), Sb, Bi, As, Cu, Hg, Ag, Pd, Pt, Au.
The resultant being a product of mn root differences, is of degree mn in the roots, and hence is of weight mn in the coefficients of the forms; i.e.
Hence in all there are mn such systems. If, therefore, we have a third equation, and we substitute each system of values in it successively and form the product of the mn expressions thus formed, we obtain a function which vanishes if any one system of values, common to the first two equations, also satisfies the third.
Now by the theory of symmetric functions, any symmetric functions of the mn values which satisfy the two equations, can be expressed in terms of the coefficient of those equations.
