The molecular-orbital method has been applied to a study of in its ground state and excited levels, and the relative importance of the perturbation and variational methods has been considered in some detail, as well as the effect of certain integrals which, in discussions of molecular structure, have often been neglected. It appears that the ion should exist in stable equilateral form with a nuclear distance about 0·85 Å., and that all excited levels are unstable.Reasons are given for supposing that the molecule H3 is linear and not triangular.