1887.] on Genesis of the Elements. 55 



nickel and cobalt. Thus may have arisen the closely allied elements 

 of the cerium, yttrium, and similar groups. In fact, we may regard 

 the collocation of the minerals of the class of samarskite and 

 gadolinite as a kind of cosmical lumber-room where elements in a 

 state of arrested development — the unconnected missing links of 

 inorganic Darwinism — are gathered together. 



Any well-defined element may be likened to a jilatform of stability, 

 connected by ladders of unstable bodies. In the first coalescence of 

 the primitive stuif there w^ould be formed the smallest atoms ; these 

 woukl then unite, forming larger groups ; the gaps between the 

 several stages would gradually be bridged over and the stable 

 element appropriate to that stage would absorb, so to speak, tho 

 unstable rungs of the ladder which led up to it. It may be ques- 

 tioned whether there is an absolute uniformity in the mass of every 

 ultimate atom even of one and the same chemical element. Pi-obably 

 our atomic weights merely represent a mean value around w^hich the 

 actual atomic weights of the atoms vary within certain narrow limits. 

 When, therefore, we say that, e. g. the atomic weight of calcium 

 is 40, the actual fact may well be, that whilst the majority of the 

 calcium atoms really have the atomic weight of 40, some are repre- 

 sented by 39-9 or 40-1, a smaller number by 89 '8 or 40*2, and 

 so on. The properties which w^e perceive in any element are thus 

 the mean of a number of atoms differing among themselves very 

 slightly, but still not identical.* Is this the true meaning of 

 Newton's " old worn particles ? " 



That this speculation, hazardous as it may seem, is in some 

 respects supported by the experimental results above described will, 

 I think, be admitted. It seems to me that the hypothesis I have just 

 suggested, if taken in conjunction with the diagram. Fig. 5, enables us 

 to proceed a step or two further along the track of the evolution of 

 the elements. We may trace in the undulating curve the action of 

 two forms of energy, the one acting vertically and the other vibrating 

 to and fro like a pendulum. Let the vertical line represent tem- 

 perature gradually sinking through an unknown number of degrees 

 from the dissociation-point of the first-formed element downwards 

 to the dissociation-jioint of the last member of the scale. 



But what form of energy is figured by the oscillating line? We 

 see it swinging to and fro to points equidistant from a neutral centre. 

 We see this divergence from neutrality confer atomicity of one, two, 

 three, or four degrees as the distance from the centre increases to 

 one, two, three, or four divisions. We see the approach to or the 

 retrocession from this same neutral line deciding the electro-negative 



* I venture to suggest that the heavier and lighter atoms formed from the 

 protyle may have been partially sorted out by a process in nature somewhat 

 analogous to the fractionation which has been already described. Such a sorting 

 out would be effected chiefly whilst atomic matter was condensing from the 

 primal state ; but it may also have been carried on during geological ages in the 

 wet way by successive solutions and re-precipitations of the various earths. 



