NATURAL SCIENCE: 



A Monthly Review of Scientific Progress. 



No" 37. Vol. VI. MARCH. 1895. 



NOTES AND COMMENTS. 



Argon. 



IN our attempt to limit the pages of Natural Science to 

 that branch of the sciences long ago called by the French 

 " Natural " we necessarily exclude detailed reference to chemistry 

 and physics ; still we are eager to congratulate Lord Rayleigh 

 and his patient collaborators on the discovery of a new element. 

 It may be long before Argon is satisfactorily investigated and 

 assigned its appropriate place or places in the hierarchy of the 

 elements. Indeed, the new substance seems unruly and not to be 

 set in its place without an undue shouldering of its neighbours. 

 What is most impressive to us now is the method of the discovery 

 and its promise for other realms of science. It was found by no 

 restless ranging over the face of the earth seeking out the scanty and 

 the rare. It was gained as the direct result of more careful, exact, 

 and patient investigation of the familiar than had been done before. 

 A few years ago biologists were ill content with any animal not 

 dredged from the remotest ocean, not taken in the furthest land, 

 and many far-reaching theories were founded upon the anatomy and 

 development of " Otitis mirabilis," some rare organism known only 

 from Cathay. We have no wish that such investigation should be 

 discouraged : the remotest in Nature may yield a clue to the most 

 familiar secret. But, as we have noticed before in these pages, the 

 present fashion in biology is to study the familiar in new ways rather 

 than to seek out the unfamiliar. May we hope that, as Lord 

 Rayleigh, weighing the constituents of the air, came upon an undis- 

 covered element, so some of those who are measuring the lengths of 

 crabs or the variations in the shells of ammonites may come upon 

 unsuspected truths. 



M 



