SIR NORMAN LOCKYER 373 



cosmos as we know it from swarms of meteorites, has also suggested 

 a chemical evolution equally majestic in its simplicity. 



A quarter of a century ago I pointed out that all the facts then 

 available suggested the hypothesis that in the atmospheres of the sun 

 and stars various degrees of ''celestial dissociation" were at work, a 

 "dissociation" which prevented the coming together of the finest 

 particles of matter which at the temperature of the earth and at all 

 artificial temperature yet attained here compose the metals, the metal- 

 loids and compounds. 



On this hypothesis the so-called atoms of the chemist represent not 

 the origins of things, but only early stages of the evolutionary process. 



At the present time we have tens of thousands of facts which were 

 not available twenty-five years ago. All these go to the support of the 

 hypothesis, and among them I must indicate the results obtained at 

 the last eclipse, dealing with the atmosphere of the sun in relation to 

 that of the various stars of higher temperature to which I called your 

 attention. In this way we can easily explain the enhanced lines of 

 iron existing practically alone in Alpha Cygni. I have yet to learn 

 any other explanation. 



I have nothing to take back, either from what I then said or what 

 I have said since on this subject, and although the view is not yet 

 accepted, I am glad to know that many other lines of work which are 

 now being prosecuted tend to favor it. 



I have no hesitation in expressing my conviction that in a not dis- 

 tant future the inorganic evolution to which we have been finally led 

 by following up Fraunhofer's useless experiment will take its natural 

 place side by side with that organic evolution, the demonstration of 

 which has been one of the glories of the nineteenth century. 



And finally now comes the moral of my address. If I have helped 

 to show that observations having no immediate practical bearing may 

 yet help on the thought of mankind, and that this is a thing worth 

 the doing, let me express a hope that such work shall find no small 

 place in the future University of Birmingham. 



