The equations of motion for a chemically reacting gas in the absence of viscosity and heat conduction are set up. It is shown that the characteristic speed defined by this set of equations is the high-frequency limit of the phase velocity of sound waves as long as the reaction rate is finite. At infinite reaction rate (chemical equilibrium) the characteristics suddenly change to the lowfrequency sound speed. The nature of this transition is discussed in connection with a recent paper of Resler (1957).