  This deficiency of Dalton's atomism aside, links were forged between it and experimentally determined combining weights that went beyond the law of constant proportions to include the laws of multiple and reciprocal proportions. If two elements combine together in more than one way to form compounds, as is the case with the various oxides of nitrogen and carbon, for example, then Daltonian atomism predicts that the weights of one of the elements in each compound, relative to a fixed weight of the second, will bear simple integral ratios to each other. This is the law of multiple proportions, predicted by Dalton and soon confirmed by a range of experiments. Daltonian atomism also predicts that if the weights of elements A and B that combine with a fixed weight of element C are x and y respectively, then if A and B combine to form a compound then the relative weights of A and B in the compound will be in the ration x:y or some simple multiple of it. This law was also confirmed by experiment.