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as demonstrated in the Cuban campaign, is a step in this direction.
And, indeed, the use of compressed air in many commercial fields
already competing with steam and electricity is a step towards the
use of air still further compressed, and cooled, meantime, to a
condition of liquidity. The enormous advantages of the air actually
liquefied, and so for the moment quiescent, over the air merely
compressed, and hence requiring a powerful retort to hold it, are
patent at a glance. But, on the other hand, the difficulty of keeping
it liquid is a disadvantage that is equally patent. How the balance
will be struck between these contending advantages and
disadvantages it remains for the practical engineering inventors of
the future—the near future, probably—to demonstrate.
Meantime there is another line of application of the ideas which
the low-temperature work has brought into prominence which has a
peculiar interest in the present connection because of its singularly
Rumfordian cast, so to speak, I mean the idea of the insulation of
cooled or heated objects in the ordinary affairs of life, as, for
example, in cooking. The subject was a veritable hobby with the
founder of the Royal Institution all his life. He studied the heat-
transmitting and heat-reflecting properties of various substances,
including such directly practical applications as rough surfaces versus
smooth surfaces for stoves, the best color for clothing in summer
and in winter, and the like. He promulgated his ideas far and wide,
and demonstrated all over Europe the extreme wastefulness of
current methods of using fuel. To a certain extent his ideas were
adopted everywhere, yet on the whole the public proved singularly
apathetic; and, especially in America, an astounding wastefulness in
the use of fuel is the general custom now as it was a century ago. A
French cook will prepare an entire dinner with a splinter of wood, a
handful of charcoal, and a half-shovelful of coke, while the same fuel
would barely suffice to kindle the fire in an American cook-stove.
Even more wonderful is the German stove, with its great bulk of
brick and mortar and its glazed tile surface, in which, by keeping the
heat in the room instead of sending it up the chimney, a few bits of
compressed coal do the work of a hodful.
 It is one merit of the low-temperature work, I repeat, to have
called attention to the possibilities of heat insulation in application to
"the useful purposes of life." If Professor Dewar's vacuum vessel can
reduce the heat-transmitting capacity of a vessel by almost ninety-
seven per cent., why should not the same principle, in modified
form, be applied to various household appliances—to ice-boxes, for
example, and to cooking utensils, even to ovens and cook-stoves?
Even in the construction of the walls of houses the principles of heat
insulation might advantageously be given far more attention than is
usual at present; and no doubt will be so soon as the European
sense of economy shall be brought home to the people of the land
of progress and inventions. The principles to be applied are already
clearly to hand, thanks largely to the technical workers with low
temperatures. It remains now for the practical inventors to make the
"application to the useful purposes of life." The technical scientists,
ignoring the example which Rumford and a few others have set,
have usually no concern with such uninteresting concerns.
For the technical scientists themselves, however, the low-
temperature field is still full of inviting possibilities of a strictly
technical kind. The last gas has indeed been liquefied, but that by no
means implies the last stage of discovery. With the successive
conquest of this gas and of that, lower and lower levels of
temperature have been reached, but the final goal still lies well
beyond. This is the north pole of the physicist's world, the absolute
zero of temperature—the point at which the heat-vibrations of
matter are supposed to be absolutely stilled. Theoretically this point
lies 2720 below the Centigrade zero. With the liquefaction of
hydrogen, a temperature of about -253 deg or -254 deg Centigrade
has been reached. So the gap seems not so very great. But like the
gap that separated Nansen from the geographical pole, it is a very
hard road to travel. How to compass it will be the study of all the
low-temperature explorers in the immediate future. Who will first
reach it, and when, and how, are questions for the future to decide.
And when the goal is reached, what will be revealed? That is a
question as full of fascination for the physicist as the north-pole
mystery has ever been for the generality of mankind. In the one
case as in the other, any attempt to answer it to-day must partake
largely of the nature of a guess, yet certain forecasts may be made
with reasonable probability. Thus it can hardly be doubted that at
the absolute zero all matter will have the form which we term solid;
and, moreover, a degree of solidity, of tenacity and compactness
greater than ever otherwise attained. All chemical activity will
presumably have ceased, and any existing compound will retain
unaltered its chemical composition so long as absolute zero pertains;
though in many, if not in all cases, the tangible properties of the
substance—its color, for example, and perhaps its crystalline texture
—will be so altered as to be no longer recognizable by ordinary
standards, any more than one would ordinarily recognize a mass of
snowlike crystals as air.
It has, indeed, been suggested that at absolute zero all matter
may take the form of an impalpable powder, the forces of cohesion
being destroyed with the vibrations of heat. But experiment seems
to give no warrant to this forecast, since cohesion seems to increase
exactly in proportion to the decrease of the heat-vibrations. The
solidity of the meteorites which come to the earth out of the depths
of space, where something approaching the zero temperature is
supposed to prevail, also contradicts this assumption. Still less
warrant is there for a visionary forecast at one time entertained that
at absolute zero matter will utterly disappear. This idea was
suggested by the observation, which first gave a clew to the
existence of the absolute zero, that a gas at ordinary temperatures
and at uniform pressure contracts by 1-27 2d of its own bulk with
each successive degree of lowered temperature. If this law held true
for all temperatures, the gas would apparently contract to
nothingness when the last degree of temperature was reached, or at
least to a bulk so insignificant that it would be inappreciable by
standards of sense. But it was soon found by the low-temperature
experimenters that the law does not hold exactly at extreme
temperatures, nor does it apply at all to the rate of contraction
which the substance shows after it assumes the liquid and solid
conditions. So the conception of the disappearance of matter at zero
falls quite to the ground.
But one cannot answer with so much confidence the suggestion
that at zero matter may take on properties hitherto quite unknown,
and making it, perhaps, differ as much from the conventional solid
as the solid differs from the liquid, or this from the gas. The form of
vibration which produces the phenomena of temperature has,
clearly, a determining share in the disposal of molecular relations
which records itself to our senses as a condition of gaseousness,
liquidity, or solidity; hence it would be rash to predict just what inter-
molecular relations may not become possible when the heat-
vibration is altogether in abeyance. That certain other forms of
activity may be able to assert themselves in unwonted measure
seems clearly forecast in the phenomena of increased magnetism,
and of phosphorescence at low temperatures above outlined.
Whether still more novel phenomena may put in an appearance at
the absolute zero, and if so, what may be their nature, are questions
that must await the verdict of experiment. But the possibility that
this may occur, together with the utter novelty of the entire subject,
gives the low-temperature work precedence over almost every other
subject now before the world for investigation (possible exceptions
being radio-activity and bacteriology). The quest of the geographical
pole is but a child's pursuit compared with the quest of the absolute
zero. In vital interest the one falls as far short of the other as the
cold of frozen water falls short of the cold of frozen air.
Where, when, and by whom the absolute zero will be first reached
are questions that may be answered from the most unexpected
quarter. But it is interesting to know that great preparations are
being made today in the laboratories of the Royal Institution for a
further attack upon the problem. Already the research equipment
there is the best in the world in this field, and recently this has been
completely overhauled and still further perfected. It would not be
strange, then, in view of past triumphs, if the final goal of the low-
temperature workers should be first reached in the same laboratory
where the outer territories of the unknown land were first
penetrated three-quarters of a century ago. There would seem to be
a poetic fitness in the trend of events should it so transpire. But of
course poetic fitness does not always rule in the land of science.
 IV. SOME PHYSICAL LABORATORIES AND
PHYSICAL PROBLEMS
SIR NORMAN LOCKYER AND SOLAR CHEMISTRY
SIR NORMAN LOCKYER is professor of astronomical physics and
director of the solar observatory at the Royal College of Science in
South Kensington. Here it is that his chief work has been done for
some thirty years past. The foundation-stone of that work is
spectroscopic study of the sun and stars. In this study Professor
Lockyer was a pioneer, and he has for years been recognized as the
leader. But he is no mere observer; he is a generalizer as well; and
he long since evolved revolutionary ideas as to the origin of the
sidereal and solar systems.
For a man whose chief occupation is the study of the sun and
stars, smoky, foggy, cloudy London may seem a strange location. I
asked Professor Lockyer about this, and his reply was most
characteristic. "The fact is," he said, "the weather here is too fine
from one point of view: my working staff is so small, and the
number of working nights so large, that most of the time there is no
one about to do anything during the day. Then, another thing, here
at South Kensington I am in touch with my colleagues in the other
departments—physics, chemistry, and so forth—and can at once
draw upon their special knowledge for aid on any obscure point in
their lines that may crop up. If we were out in the country this
would not be so. You see, then, that it is a choice between weather
and brains. I prefer the brains."
Professor Lockyer went on to state, however, that he is by no
means altogether dependent upon the observations made at South
Kensington. For certain purposes the Royal Observatory at
Greenwich is in requisition, and there are three observatories at
different places in India at which photographs of the sun-spots and
solar spectra are taken regularly. From these combined sources
photographs of the sun are forthcoming practically every day of the
year; to be accurate, on three hundred and sixty days out of the
three hundred and sixty-five. It was far otherwise when Professor
Lockyer first began his studies of the sun, as observations were then
made and recorded on only about one-third of the days in each year.
Exteriorly the observatory at South Kensington is not at all such a
place as one might expect to find. It is, in Professor Lockyer's own
words, "little more than a collection of sheds," but within these
alleged sheds may be found an excellent equipment of telescopes,
both refracting and reflecting, and of all other things requisite to the
peculiar study which forms the subject of special research here.
I have had occasion again and again to call attention to this
relatively meagre equipment of the European institutions, but in no
case, perhaps, is the contrast more striking between the exterior
appearance of a famous scientific institution and the work that is
being accomplished within it than is shown in the case of the South
Kensington observatory. It should be added that this remark does
not apply to the chief building of the Royal College of Science itself.
The theories for which Professor Lockyer has so long been famous
are well known to every one who takes much interest in the
progress of scientific ideas. They are notably the theory that there is
a direct causal association between the prevalence of sun-spots and
terrestrial weather; the theory of the meteoritic origin of all
members of the sidereal family; and the dissociation theory of the
elements, according to which our so-called elements are really
compounds, capable of being dissociated into simpler forms when
subjected to extreme temperatures, such as pertain in many stars.
As I have said, these theories are by no means new. Professor
Lockyer has made them familiar by expounding them for a full
quarter of a century or more. But if not new, these theories are
much too important to have been accepted at once without a protest
from the scientific world. In point of fact, each of them has been
met with most ardent opposition, and it would, perhaps, not be too
much to say that not one of them is, as yet, fully established. It is of
the highest interest to note, however, that the multitudinous
observations bearing upon each of these topics during the past
decade have tended, in Professor Lockyer's opinion, strongly to
corroborate each one of these opinions.
Two or three years ago Sir Norman Lockyer, in association with his
son, communicated to the Royal Society a paper in which the data
recently obtained as to the relation between sun-spots and the
weather in India—the field of observations having been confined to
that territory—are fully elaborated. A remarkable feature of the
recent work in that connection has been the proof, or seeming proof,
that the temperature of the sun fluctuates from year to year. At
times when the sun-spots are numerous and vigorous in their action,
the spectrum of the elements in these spots becomes changed.
During the times of minimum sun-spot activity the spectrum shows,
for example, the presence of large quantities of iron in these spots—
of course in a state of vapor. But in times of activity this iron
disappears, and the lines which previously vouched for it are
replaced by other lines spoken of as the enhanced lines of iron—that
is to say, the lines which are believed to represent the unknown
substance or substances into which the iron has been decomposed;
and what is true of iron is true of various other elements that are
detected in the sun-spots. The explanation of this phenomena, if
Professor Lockyer reads the signs aright, is that during times of
minimum sun-spot activity the temperature of the sun-spots is
relatively cool, and that in times of activity the temperature becomes
greatly increased. One must come, therefore, to speaking of hot
spots and cool spots on the sun; although the cool spots, it will be
understood, would hardly be considered cool in the terrestrial sense,
since their temperature is sufficient to vaporize iron.
Now the point of the recent observations is that the fluctuations in
the sun's heat, due to the periodic increase and subsidence of sun-
spot disturbances—such fluctuations having been long recognized as
having regular cyclic intervals of about eleven years—are
instrumental in effecting changes in the terrestrial weather.
According to the paper just mentioned, it would appear to be
demonstrated that the periods of decreased rainfall in India have a
direct and relatively unvarying relationship to the prevalence of the
sun-spots, and that, therefore, it has now become possible, within
reasonable limits, to predict some years in advance the times of
famine in India. So important a conclusion as this is certainly not to
be passed over lightly, and all the world, scientific and unscientific
alike, will certainly watch with acute interest for the verification of
this seemingly startling practical result of so occult a science as solar
spectroscopy.
The theory of the decomposition of the elements is closely bound
up with the meteoritic theory. In a word, it may be said of each that
Professor Lockyer is firmly convinced that all the evidence that has
accumulated in recent years is so strongly in favor as to bring these
theories almost to a demonstration. The essence of the meteoritic
theory, it will be recalled, is that all stars have their origin in nebulae
which consist essentially of clouds of relatively small meteorites. It
will be recalled further that Professor Lockyer long ago pointed out
that stars pass through a regular series of changes as to
temperature, with corresponding changes of structure, becoming for
a time hotter and hotter until a maximum is reached, and then
passing through gradual stages of cooling until their light dies out
altogether. Very recently Professor Lockyer has been enabled,
through utilization of the multiform records accumulated during
years of study, to define the various typical stages of the sidereal
evolution; and not merely to define them but to illustrate them
practically by citing stars which belong to each of these stages, and
to give them yet clearer definition by naming the various elements
which the spectroscope reveals as present in each.
His studies have shown that the elements do not always give the
same spectrum under all conditions; a result quite at variance with
the earlier ideas on the subject. Even in the terrestrial laboratory it is
possible to subject various metals, including iron, to temperatures
attained with the electric spark at which the spectrum becomes
different from that, for example, which was attained with the lower
temperature of the electric arc. Through these studies so-called
series-spectra have been attained for various elements, and a
comparison of these series-spectra with the spectra of various stars
has led to the conclusion that many of the unknown lines previously
traced in the spectra of such stars are due to the decomposition
products of familiar elements; all of which, of course, is directly in
line of proof of the dissociation hypothesis.
Another important result of Professor Lockyer's very recent studies
has come about through observation of the sun in eclipse. A very
interesting point at issue all along has been the question as to what
layers of the sun's atmosphere are efficient in producing the so-
called reverse lines of the spectrum. It is now shown that the effect
is not produced, as formerly supposed, by the layers of the
atmosphere lying just above the region which Professor Lockyer long
ago named the chromosphere, but by the gases of higher regions.
Reasoning from analogy, it may be supposed that a corresponding
layer of the atmosphere of other stars is the one which gives us the
reverse spectrum of those stars. The exact composition of this layer
of the sidereal atmosphere must, of course, vary with the
temperature of the different stars, but in no case can we expect to
receive from the spectroscope a full record of all the substances that
may be present in other layers of the atmosphere or in the body of
the star itself. Thus, for example, the ordinary Freuenhofer spectrum
of the sun shows us no trace of the element helium, though through
other observations at the time of eclipse Professor Lockyer had
discovered that element there, as we have seen, some thirty years
before anything was known of it on the earth.
In a recent eclipse photographs were taken of the spectra of the
lower part of the sun's atmosphere by itself, and it was found that
the spectrum of this restricted area taken by itself gave the lines
which specialize the spectra of so different a star as Procyon. "I
recognize in the result," says Professor Lockyer, "a veritable Rosetta
Stone which will enable us to read the celestial hieroglyphics
presented to us in stellar spectra, and help us to study the spectra
and to get at results much more distinctly and certainly than ever
before."
 But the most striking confirmation which the meteoritic hypothesis
has received has come to hand through study of the spectrum of the
new star which appeared in the constellation Perseus in February,
1901, and which was so widely heralded everywhere in the public
press. This star was discovered on the morning of February 22d by
star-gazers in Scotland, and in America almost simultaneously. It had
certainly not been visible a few hours before, and it had blazed up
suddenly to a greater brilliancy than that of a first-magnitude star. At
first it was bluish-white in color, indicating an extremely high
temperature, but it rapidly subsided in brilliancy and assumed a red
color as it cooled, passing thus, in the course of a few days, through
stages for which ordinary stars require periods of many millions of
years.
The most interesting feature of the spectrum of this new star was
the fact that it showed both light and dark lines for the same
substances, the two lying somewhat apart. This means, being
interpreted, that some portions of a given substance are giving out
light, thus producing the bright lines of the spectrum, and that other
portions of the same substance are stopping certain rays of
transmitted light, thus producing the dark lines. The space between
the bright and dark lines, being measured, indicated that there was
a differential motion between the two portions of substance thus
recorded of something like seven hundred miles a second. This
means, according to theory—and it seems hardly possible to explain
it otherwise—that two sidereal masses, one at least of which was
moving at an enormous rate of speed, had collided, such collision, of
course, being the cause of the incandescence that made the mass
suddenly visible from the earth as a new star.
New stars are by no means every-day affairs, there having been
but thirty-two of them recorded in the world's history, and of these
only two have exceeded the present one in brilliancy. As a mere
spectacle, therefore, this new star was of great interest; but a far
greater importance attaches to it through the fact that it conforms
so admirably to the course that meteoritic hypothesis would predict
for it. "That is what confounds my opponents," said Professor
Lockyer, in talking to me about the new star. "Most of those who
oppose my theory have not taken the trouble to make observations
for themselves, but have contented themselves with falling back
apparently on the postulate that because a theory is new it must be
wrong. Then, outside the scientific world, comparatively few people
appreciate the extreme parsimony of nature. They expect, therefore,
that when such a phenomenon as the appearance of a new star
occurs, the new-comer will establish new rules for itself and bring
chaos into the scientific world. But in point of fact nature never does
things in two ways if she can possibly do them in one, and the most
striking thing about the new stars is that all the phenomena they
present conform so admirably to the laws built up through
observation of the old familiar stars. As to our particular theories, we
here at South Kensington"—it will be understood that this use of the
editorial "we" is merely a modest subterfuge on the part of Professor
Lockyer—"have no regard for them at all simply as ours. Like all
scientists worthy the name, we seek only the truth, and should new
facts come along that seem to antagonize our theory we should
welcome them as eagerly as we welcome all new facts of whatever
bearing. But the truth is that no such new facts have appeared in all
these years, but that, on the contrary, the meteoritic hypothesis has
received ever-increasing support from most unexpected sources,
from none more brilliantly or more convincingly than from this new
star in Perseus." And I suspect that as much as this at least—if not
indeed a good deal more—will be freely admitted by every candid
investigator of Sir Norman Lockyer's theory.
SIR WILLIAM RAMSAY AND THE NEW GASES
The seat of Sir William Ramsay's labors is the University College,
London. The college building itself, which is located on Gower Street,
is, like the British Museum, reminiscent or rather frankly duplicatory
in its columned architecture of the classical. Interiorly it is like so
many other European institutions in its relative simplicity of
equipment. One finds, for example, Professor Ramsay and Dr.
Travers generating the hydrogen for their wonderful experiments in
an old beer-cask. Professor Ramsay himself is a tall, rather spare
man, just entering the gray stage of life, with the earnest visage of
the scholar, the keen, piercing eye of the investigator—yet not
without a twinkle that justifies the lineage of the "canny Scot." He is
approachable, affable, genial, full of enthusiasm for his work, yet not
taking it with such undue seriousness as to rob him of human
interest—in a word, the type of a man of science as one would
picture him in imagination, and would hope, with confident
expectation, to find him in reality.
I have said that the equipment of the college is somewhat
primitive, but this must not be taken too comprehensively. Such
instances as that of the beer-cask show, to be sure, an adaptation of
means to ends on economical lines; yet, on the other hand, it should
not be forgotten that the beer-cask serves its purpose admirably;
and, in a word, it may be said that Professor Ramsay's laboratory
contains everything that is needed to equip it fully for the special
work to which it has been dedicated for some years past. In general,
it looks like any other laboratory—glass tubes, Bunsen burners,
retorts and jars being in more or less meaningless tangles; but there
are two or three bits of apparatus pretty sure to attract the eye of
the casual visitor which deserve special mention. One of these is a
long, wooden, troughlike box which extends across the room near
the ceiling and is accessible by means of steps and a platform at one
end. Through this boxlike tube the chief expert in spectroscopy (Dr.
Bay-ley) spies on the spectrum of the gas, and learns some of its
innermost secrets. But an even more mystifying apparatus is an
elaborate array of long glass tubes, some of them carried to the
height of several feet, interspersed with cups of mercury and with
thermometers of various sizes and shapes. The technical scientist
would not make much of this description, but neither would an
untechnical observer make much of the apparatus; yet to Dr.
Travers, its inventor, it is capable of revealing such extraordinary
things as the temperature of liquid hydrogen—a temperature far
below that at which the contents of even an alcoholic thermometer
are solidified; at which, indeed, the prime constituents of the air
suffer a like fate. The responsible substance which plays the part of
the familiar mercury, or alcohol, in Dr. Travers's marvellous
thermometer is hydrogen gas. The principle by which it is utilized
does not differ, in its rough essentials, from that of ordinary
thermometers, but the details of its construction are much too
intricate to be elaborated here.
But if you would see the most wonderful things in this laboratory—
or rather, to be quite accurate, I should say, if you would stand in
the presence of the most wonderful things—you must go with
Professor Ramsay to his own private laboratory, and be introduced to
some little test-tubes that stand inverted in cups of mercury
decorating a shelf at one end. You would never notice these tubes of
your own accord were you to browse ever so long about the room.
Even when your attention is called to them you still see nothing
remarkable. These are ordinary test-tubes inverted over ordinary
mercury. They contain something, since the mercury does not rise in
them completely, but if that something be other than ordinary air
there is nothing about its appearance, or rather lack of appearance,
to demonstrate it. But your interest will hardly fail to be arrested
when Professor Ramsay, indicating one and another of these little
tubes, says: "Here you see, or fail to see, all the krypton that has
ever been in isolated existence in the world, and here all the neon,
and here, again, all the zenon."
You will understand, of course, that krypton, neon, and zenon are
the new gases of the atmosphere whose existence no one suspected
until Professor Ramsay ferreted them out a few years ago and
isolated them. In one sense there should be nothing mysterious
about substances that every air-breathing creature on the globe has
been imbibing pretty constantly ever since lungs came into fashion.
But in another view the universal presence of these gases in the air
makes it seem all the more wonderful that they could so long have
evaded detection, considering that chemistry has been a precise
science for more than a century. During that time thousands of
chemists have made millions of experiments in the very midst of
these atmospheric gases, yet not one of the experimenters, until
recently, suspected their existence. This proves that these gases are
no ordinary substances—common though they be. Personally I have
examined many scientific exhibits in many lands, but nowhere have I
seen anything that filled my imagination with so many scientific
visions as these little harmless test-tubes at the back of Professor
Ramsay's desk. Perhaps I shall attempt to visualize some of these
imaginings before finishing this paper, but for the moment I wish to
speak of the modus operandi of the discovery of these additions to
the list of elements.
The discovery of argon came about in a rather singular way. Lord
Rayleigh, of the Royal Institution, had noticed in experiments with
nitrogen that when samples of this element were obtained from
chemicals, such samples were uniformly about one per cent, lighter
in weight than similar quantities of nitrogen obtained from the
atmosphere. This discrepancy led him to believe that the
atmospheric nitrogen must contain some impurity.
Curiously enough, the experiments of Cavendish, the discoverer of
nitrogen—experiments made more than a century ago—had seemed
to show quite conclusively that some gaseous substance different
from nitrogen was to be found mixed with the samples of this gas as
he obtained it from the atmosphere. This conclusion of Cavendish,
put forward indeed but tentatively, had been quite ignored by his
successors. Now, however, it transpired, by experiments made jointly
by Lord Rayleigh and Professor Ramsay, that the conclusion was
quite justified, it being shown presently that there actually exists in
every portion of nitrogen, as extracted from the atmosphere, a
certain quantity of another gas, hitherto unknown, and which now
received the name of argon. It will be recalled with what
astonishment the scientific and the unscientific world alike received
the announcement made to the Royal Society in 1895 of the
discovery of argon, and the proof that this hitherto unsuspected
constituent of the atmosphere really constitutes about one per cent,
of the bulk of atmospheric nitrogen, as previously estimated.
The discovery here on the earth of a substance which Professor
Lockyer had detected as early as 1868 in the sun, and which he had
provisionally named helium, excited almost equal interest; but this
element was found in certain minerals, and not as a constituent of
the atmosphere.
Having discovered so interesting a substance as argon, Professor
Ramsay and his assistants naturally devoted much time and
attention to elucidating the peculiarities of the new substance. In the
course of these studies it became evident to them that the presence
of argon alone did not fully account for all the phenomena they
observed in handling liquefied air, and in 1898 Professor Ramsay was
again able to electrify his audience at the Royal Society by the
announcement of the discovery, in pretty rapid succession, of three
other elementary substances as constituents of the atmosphere,
these three being the ones just referred to—krypton, neon, and
zenon.
It is a really thrilling experience, standing in the presence of the
only portions of these new substances that have been isolated, to
hear Professor Ramsay and Dr. Travers, his chief assistant, tell the
story of the discovery—how they worked more and more eagerly as
they found themselves, so to say, on a "warmer scent," following out
this clew and that until the right one at last brought the chase to a
successful issue. "It was on a Sabbath morning in June, if I
remember rightly, when we finally ran zenon down," says Dr.
Travers, with a half smile; and Professor Ramsay, his eyes twinkling
at the recollection of this very unorthodox procedure, nods assent.
"And have you got them all now?" I queried, after hearing the story.
"Yes; we think so," replied Professor Ramsay. "And I am rather glad
of it," he adds, with a half sigh, "for it was wearisome even though
fascinating work." Just how wearisome it must have been only a
professional scientific investigator can fully comprehend; but the
fascination of it all may be comprehended in some measure by every
one who has ever attempted creative work of whatever grade or in
whatever field.
I have just said that the little test-tubes contain the only bit of
each of the substances named that has ever been isolated. This
statement might lead the untechnical reader to suppose that these
substances, once isolated, have been carefully stored away and
jealously guarded, each in its imprisoning test-tubes. Jealously
guarded they have been, to be sure, but there has not been, by any
means, the solitary confinement that the words might seem to imply.
On the contrary, each little whiff of gas has been subjected to a
variety of experiments—made to pass through torturing-tubes under
varying conditions of temperature, and brought purposely in contact
with various other substances, that its physical and chemical
properties might be tested. But in each case the experiment ended
with the return of the substance, as pure as before, to its proper
tube. The precise results of all these experiments have been
communicated to the Royal Society by Professor Ramsay. Most of
these results are of a technical character, hardly appealing to the
average reader. There is one very salient point, however, in regard to
which all the new substances, including argon and helium, agree;
and it is that each of them seems to be, so far as present
experiments go, absolutely devoid of that fundamental chemical
property, the power to combine with other elements. All of them are
believed to be monatomic—that is to say, each of their molecules is
composed of a single atom. This, however, is not an absolutely novel
feature as compared with other terrestrial elements, for the same
thing is true, for example, of such a familiar substance as mercury.
But the incapacity to enter into chemical combinations seems very
paradoxical; indeed it is almost like saying that these are chemical
elements which lack the most fundamental of chemical properties.
It is this lack of combining power, of course, that explains the non-
discovery of these elements during all these years, for the usual way
of testing an element is to bring it in contact with other substances
under conditions that permit its atoms to combine with other atoms
to the formation of new substances. But in the case of new elements
such experiments as this have not proved possible under any
conditions as yet attained, and reliance must be had upon other
physical tests—such as variation of the bulk of the gas under
pressure, and under varying temperatures, and a study of the critical
temperatures and pressures under which each gas becomes a liquid.
The chief reliance, however, is the spectroscope—the instrument
which revealed the presence of helium in the sun and the stars more
than a quarter of a century before Professor Ramsay ferreted it out
as a terrestrial element. Each whiff of colorless gas in its test-tube
interferes with the light passing through it in such a way that when
viewed through a prism it gives a spectrum of altogether unique
lines, which stamp it as krypton, neon, or zenon as definitely as
certain familiar and more tangible properties stamp the liquid which
imprisons it as mercury.
QUERIES SUGGESTED BY THE NEW GASES
Suppose that a few years ago you had asked some chemist, "What
are the constituents of the atmosphere?" He would have responded,
with entire confidence, "Oxygen and nitrogen chiefly, with a certain
amount of water-vapor and of carbonic-acid gas and a trace of
ammonia." If questioned as to the chief properties of these
constituents, he would have replied, with equal facility, that these
are among the most important elements; that oxygen might almost
be said to be the life-giving principle, inasmuch as no air-breathing
creature could get along without it for many moments together; and
that nitrogen is equally important to the organism, though in a
different way, inasmuch as it is not taken up through the lungs. As
to the water-vapor, that, of course, is a compound of oxygen and
hydrogen, and no one need be told of its importance, as every one
knows that water makes up the chief bulk of protoplasm; carbonic-
acid gas is also a compound of oxygen, the other element this time
being carbon, and it plays a quite different rôle in the economy of
the living organism, inasmuch as it is produced by the breaking
down of tissues, and must be constantly exhaled from the lungs to
prevent the poisoning of the organism by its accumulation; while
ammonia, which exists only in infinitesimal quantities in the air, is a
compound of nitrogen and hydrogen, introducing, therefore, no new
element.
If one studies somewhat attentively the relation which these
elements composing the atmosphere bear to the living organism he
cannot fail to be struck with it; and it would seem a safe inductive
reasoning from the stand-point of the evolutionist that the
constituents of the atmosphere have come to be all-essential to the
living organism, precisely because all their components are
universally present. But, on the other hand, if we consider the
matter in the light of these researches regarding the new gases, it
becomes clear that perhaps the last word has not been said on this
subject; for here are four or five other elementary substances which,
if far less abundant than oxygen and nitrogen, are no less widely
distributed and universally present in the atmosphere, yet no one of
which apparently takes any chemical share whatever in ministering
to the needs of the living organism. This surely is an enigma.
Taking another point of view, let us try to imagine the real status
of these new gases of the air. We think of argon as connected with
nitrogen because in isolation experiments it remains after the
oxygen has been exhausted, but in point of fact there is no such
connection between argon and nitrogen in nature. The argon atom
is just as closely in contact with the oxygen in the atmosphere as
with the nitrogen; it simply repels each indiscriminately. But consider
a little further; the argon atom not only repels all advance on the
part of oxygen and nitrogen, but it equally holds itself aloof from its
own particular kindred atoms. The oxygen or nitrogen atom never
rests until it has sought out a fellow, but the argon atom declines all
fellowship. When the chemist has played his tricks upon it, it finds
itself crowded together with other atoms of the same kind; but lift
up the little test-tube and these scurry off from one another in every
direction, each losing its fellows forever as quickly as possible.
As one ponders this one is almost disposed to suggest that the
atom of argon (or of krypton, helium, neon, or zenon, for the same
thing applies to each and all of these) seems the most perfect thing
known to us in the world, for it needs no companionship, it is self-
sufficing. There is something sublime about this magnificient
isolation, this splendid self-reliance, this undaunted and undauntable
self-sufficiency—these are traits which the world is wont to ascribe
to beings more than mortal. But let us pause lest we push too far
into the old, discredited territory of metaphysics.
PROFESSOR J. J. THOMPSON AND THE NATURE OP ELECTRICITY
 Many fascinating questions suggest themselves in connection with
these strange, new elements—new, of course, only in the sense of
human knowledge—which all these centuries have been about us,
yet which have managed until now to keep themselves as invisible
and as intangible as spirits. Have these celibate atoms remained
thus always isolated, taking no part in world-building? Are they
destined throughout the sweep of time to keep up this celibate
existence? And why do these elements alone refuse all fellowship,
while the atoms of all the other seventy-odd known elements seek
out mates under proper conditions with unvarying avidity?
It is perhaps not possible fully to answer these questions as yet,
but recent studies in somewhat divergent fields give us suggestive
clews to some of them. I refer in particular to the studies in
reference to the passage of electricity through liquids and gases and
to the observations on radioactivity. The most conspicuous worker in
the field of electricity is Professor J. J. Thompson, who for many
years has had charge of the Cavendish laboratory at Cambridge. In
briefly reviewing certain phases of his work we shall find ourselves
brought into contact with some of the same problems raised by
workers in the other fields of physics, and shall secure some very
interesting bits of testimony as to the solution of questions already
outlined.
The line of observation which has led to the most striking results
has to do, as already suggested, with the conduction of electricity
through liquids and gases. It has long been known that many liquids
conduct electricity with relative facility. More recently it has been
observed that a charge of electricity carried by any liquid bears a
curious relation to the atomic composition of that liquid. If the atom
in question is one of the sort that can combine with only a single
other atom (that is to say, a monovalent atom), each atom conveys
a unit charge, which is spoken of as an ion of electricity. But if a
divalent atom is in question the charge carried is double, and,
similarly, a trivalent atom carries a triple charge. As there are no
intermediate charges it is obvious that here a very close relation is
suggested between electrical units and the atomic units of matter.