126 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



of Davy, satisfied that it was a compound body, was under 

 the impression that it was associated with an inflammable 

 base combined with oxygen, for which he proposed the name 

 Nitricon. But he is said to have distrusted or abandoned this 

 hypothesis in consequence of experiments made by Davy, 

 who also believed that atmospheric nitrogen was a compound 

 body, of which oxygen formed an element, and endeavoured, 

 but in vain, to detach the latter by means of the vapour of 

 potassium. But his experiments led only to the negative 

 result that the divellent power of potassium was insufficient 

 to overcome the affinity by which oxygen was held in com- 

 bination with the other elementary matter associated with 

 simple nitrogen. Mr. David Low, of Edinburgh, who pub- 

 lished an important treatise on the " Simple Bodies of 

 Chemistry," in 1856, also treated atmosphei-ic nitrogen as a 

 compound substance, and mentioned that, from its known 

 characters, the same opinion had long been entertained, but 

 that, as all attempts to decompose it had failed, chemists had 

 been content to acquiesce in regard to it, in their own maxim, 

 that it must be regarded as simple because they had not been 

 able to prove it compound, whilst he points out that all the 

 known circumstances ought to have led to the juster conclusion 

 that it should be treated as compound, although chemists had 

 nob been able to prove it so by means of the agents which 

 they had employed to dissociate its elements. He also men- 

 tioned that, although it had theretofore resisted all attempts 

 to dissociate it directly from the substance with which it was 

 evidently compounded, there were reasons for believing that 

 in many unheeded experiments in the laboratory its com- 

 pound nature had manifested itself, especially in cases in 

 which it was impossible otherwise to account for its presence. 



But this point has now been set at rest by recent investi- 

 gations made by Lord Eayleigh and Professor Eamsay, which 

 have not only resulted in conclusively establishing the com- 

 pound nature of atmospheric nitrogen, but also in showing 

 that the substance with which it is associated is a gas pre- 

 viously unknown, to which they have given the name of 

 argon. But the question, What is argon ? still remains to 

 be solved. So far as present researches into its chemical 

 character have been carried, it is found to possess properties 

 of so peculiar a description as to raise questions of paramount 

 importance for chemistry. 



It is well known that, prior to this discovery. Lord Eayleigh 

 had been for many years engaged in inquiries as to the den- 

 sities of several of the gases, and that he had found dis- 

 crepancies in many of the results obtained which could only 

 be accounted for in one of two ways,— namely, either by the 

 occurrence of unavoidable errors in experiment or by the 



