244 TRANSMUTATION OF ELEMENTS. 



synthesis, moreover, is declared to be one under human control, 

 whereas the breaking down of the heavy elements is a process 

 which man has not hitherto found means either to stay or hasten. 

 If their experiments are confirmed . Collie and Patterson have 

 succeeded either in transmuting still simpler elements into neon 

 and helium, or else, as it has been put, they have themselves 

 created, out of the ether, elements of extreme simplicity. Sir 

 William Ramsay's announcement in February consisted mainly 

 in this, that, on heating old X-ray bulbs to 300 . ami collecting 

 the gas, he found it to contain helium, the source of which, in the 

 present state of knowledge, he was at a loss to account for. 

 Professor Norman Collie and Mr, Patterson, taking all possible 

 precautions to secure the purity of the gas used as the basis of 

 their experiments, sparked hydrogen at low pressure, and. 

 anticipating to obtain helium, which would in itself have been 

 sufficiently remarkable, the astonishing discovery of the resulting 

 presence of neon was made. The tube containing the hydrogen 

 to be sparked was enveloped in a second tube, and it appeared 

 that helium was first formed by the sparking of the hydrogen, 

 and passed through the glass walls of the inner tube with high 

 velocity under the action of the discharge. If at this stage it 

 met with oxygen the result seemed to be that neon ( atomic 

 weight = 20 ) was produced by the combination of the helium 

 (atomic weight = 4) with oxygen (atomic weight = 16). Pro- 

 fessor Collie was quite satisfied that helium and neon had been 

 produced from substances in which they were not previously 

 present. There were, he said, various- possibilities : it might be 

 that the elements of the tube in the electrodes gave neon or 

 helium under the influence of the discharge. This gave them ten 

 or a dozen elements to choose from as the source. Again, there 

 was the chance that the hydrogen was the source. Or it was 

 possible that they were dealing with a primordial form of 

 matter. At any rate, one thing seemed certain ; the elements 

 could be changed, and they could be changed in a way very 

 different from the way in which radium was changed. In the 

 case of radium the process could neither be hastened nor retarded ; 

 but the present phenomenon was artificial, and further, the pro- 

 ces> was occurring at the other end of the system of the atoms, 

 producing elements of low atomic weight. The old idea of the 

 transmutation of elements had to be altered. The President of 

 the Chemical Society, Professor Arthur Smithells, B.Sc, F.R.S.. 

 Professor of Chemistry in the University of Leeds, who moved 

 that the thanks of the Society be accorded to the authors for 

 their momentous communication, remarked that he was some- 

 what breathless at the announcement; just made, and that for 

 dramatic interest the papers which they had heard read had never 

 been surpassed in the history of the Society. The announcements 

 made by the authors are of a startling nature, and might have 

 excited scepticism and even ridicule but for previous work 



