SOME RECENT TRANSMUTATIONS 51 



pressure, although he does not make that plain. Keeler 25 has called 

 attention to the five spectra of oxygen which differ so widely in their 

 appearance that there is no indication that they belong to the same 

 substance. 



Perhaps the most remarkable portion of this last work of Eamsay, 

 the full account of which, just published, reads like a story of magic, 

 had to do with the solutions of the copper salts in which the emanation 

 performed its devolutions. These solutions after the removal of the 

 copper showed the presence of lithium, the smallest metallic member 

 of the first family in the periodic classification. So careful an experi- 

 menter as Eamsay of course took precautions to prove the absence of 

 lithium in any of the apparatus or chemicals used by blank tests. 



The facts indicate decomposition, " degradation," as Eamsay put 

 it, and not composition, synthesis. He makes no claim to what has 

 generally been understood by the laity as transmutation, namely, the 

 conversion of silver into gold. 



The emanation, in passing through its transformations, evolves 

 much the greater portion of the energy produced by radium and its 

 educts. Metaphysicians, among whom are many of the most matter- 

 of-fact men of science, have long speculated upon the constitution of 

 matter. Time and again it has been urged that the heavy chemical 

 elements would eventually be broken down into lighter ones. All that 

 was needed was sufficient energy, or the right kind of energy, properly 

 applied. Up to the time of Eamsay' s work no successfully undisputed 

 experimental facts have been offered in substantiation of these philo- 

 sophic considerations. Can it be that we have Bacon's " Philosopher's 

 stone " in the form of a storehouse of concentrated energy, the 

 emanation ? 



It is evident in this limited communication that many omissions 

 have had to be made. I have purposely avoided the complication, which 

 would be introduced by a discussion of the attractive electronic theory 

 of matter. Nor has there been a desire to depict the acrobatic cerebra- 

 tions of French hylozoists, although Ostwald, perhaps the greatest 

 teacher of chemistry to-day, captains the energistic propaganda. 



25 Scientific American Supplement, 88, 977 (1894). 



