220 NATURAL SCIENCE — [October 
deposits of guano are becoming exhausted, and our final resource, 
the nitrate-fields of Chile, cannot last more than fifty years, even if 
the demands upon them be not increased. The solution proposed 
by Sir William Crookes is the formation of nitrate by the com- 
bustion of the atmosphere. This can be effected, he says, by passing 
a strong induction current between terminals. By utilising natural 
sources of power, an electric current may be obtained that will 
enable nitrate of soda to be produced at less than £5 per ton, two- 
thirds the price of Chile nitrate. 
THE MYSTERIES OF MATTER 
THE second portion of the Presidential address was interesting 
chiefly for its speculations on the constitution of matter. Here 
Sir William adduced the various recent discoveries confirmatory of 
his own views, so long opposed, as to the existence of molecular 
streams of electrified radiant matter. The task of the future is to 
render available the energy contained in matter that to outward 
appearance is quiescent. The phosphorescence of uranium, and in 
a higher degree of the newly discovered polonium, is due to its 
power of extracting such energy, however that power be explicable. 
A new application of the principles that underly his theory of 
radiant matter has within the last few weeks enabled Sir William 
Crookes to add another to his remarkable successes in the frac- 
tionation and spectrographic study of the rare earths. He believes 
that he has demonstrated the existence of yet another element, 
which he terms Monium, because the lines of its spectrum stand 
alone, almost at the extreme end of the ultra-violet. 
These far-reaching speculations as to the existence of energy, 
barely thinkable and yet capable of investigation, of measurement, 
and of utilisation, naturally led Sir William Crookes on to the most 
debateable and most confessedly speculative part of his address. 
To his previously published statements on the subject.of psychical 
research, he adheres. However far we may accompany or lag 
behind Sir William in acceptance of the alleged phenomena of tele- 
pathy, this at least we must recognise in his words: the belief on 
the one hand that the enquiry has not yet reached the scientific 
stage of certainty ; on the other hand, that any explanation will be 
an extension of theories of the constitution of the material universe 
already widely held and serving as the basis of actual experiment. 
Whether the suggestion, which we imagine to be implied, that 
telepathy is analogous to wireless telegraphy be accepted by physi- 
ologists matters little. We believe that it is right of Sir William 
Crookes to allude to these matters from the President’s chair, since 
we think that for their investigation is demanded the co-operation 
of the keenest intellects in all branches of science. “To ignore the 
