44 Kansas Academy of Science. 



What is the nature of these intermolecular bonds, so easily 

 broken in the one case, so difficult in the other ? 



By the simple relation of their combining weights, all the 

 elements are arranged in groups composed of those that have 

 similar properties. The twentieth century is awaiting a gen- 

 ius of the type of a Dalton, a Levosier, or a Mendeleeff, to 

 find the fundamental law or laws by which all these facts may 

 be explained. Possibly some light is beginning to appear 

 through the new field of radio-activity, and the electron theory 

 of the structure of matter, which proposes to account for the 

 relation of matter and all forms of energy through whirls 

 and strains in the ether. 



Some of the new gaseous elements, as actinium, are said to 

 have a limited life and to change into other substances. Each 

 radio-active product is a transition substance, possessing, 

 while it lasts, definite chemical and physical properties. The 

 electrons that fly off from radium and bombard the air par- 

 ticles around it, and raise the surrounding temperature, are 

 said not to be matter, yet it is found that the mass fluctuates 

 in the presence of the electrical changes. It is further claimed 

 that all the elements possess specific radio-activity in a more 

 or less marked degree. These observations have been made 

 in the last ten years, and would indicate that we may soon 

 fully understand the minute structure of matter and its re- 

 lation to the ether. 



Chemistry as a science is the product of the nineteenth 

 century and has been very fruitful in its service, yet it has. 

 many problems of great economic value to solve in such con- 

 structive work as the preparation, on a commercial scale, of 

 many compounds, both organic and inorganic. 



Physics, with all its brilliant discoveries of the past, pre- 

 sents us machinery of motive power which does not utilize, 

 on the average, more than twenty per cent, of the available- 

 energy used. Will the physicist ever be able to turn the latent 

 energy of coal directly into electrical or some other form Of 

 kinetic energy without passing through heat, and thus greatly 

 increase the efficiency of our motive machinery? Biologists 

 have shown us how it is possible, by a change in nutrition, 

 to produce aberrant types of life and have demonstrated the 

 transmission of those acquired characters. The investiga- 

 tions of our experimental stations have shown beyond ques- 

 tion, how it is possible to add largely to the yield, as well as; 



