Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 January 2016
We defined a prime decomposition symbol [d1 d2, p] in a previous paper [3], and characterized in [4] the set of rational primes p which are decomposed completely in a non-abelian central extension which is of degree 8 in substance. The explicit value of the symbol was determined by using a solution of certain ternary quadratic diophantine equation. The solution corresponds to a square root of an ideal class of the principal genus of a quadratic field. This is translated to a problem in classes of integral quadratic forms, namely to find a form whose duplication is a given one contained in a principal genus. An explicit method to find the form is given by Gauss in [5, Art. 286], which is due to his ternary form reduction.