ORIGIN OF VEGETATION IN NITHSDALE. 3 
particles, and consist of, or are charged with, negative electricity. 
That they are kept in their multitudinous and agitated orbits 
within the boundaries of the atom by some tie which is certainly 
not material. So far this is a gigantic conception, and, amongst 
other things, abolishes materialism as a serious scientific 
hypothesis, but that is not all. George Darwin goes on to con- 
trast the world of electrons in the atom, the world of atoms in the 
molecule, and the world of planets and satellites in a solar system. 
If an atom were magnified to the size of our earth an electron might 
be larger than a marble and smaller than a cricket ball. Yet 
I think I am right in saying that if a molecule of some common 
salt were as large as a church, an atom would be the size of a 
full stop in print. The molecules themselves are so small as to 
be quite invisible. The most interesting part of this address to 
me is the manner in which all sorts of systems of stability and 
instability are compared. ‘The cells which make up the bodies 
of vegetables and animals may be compared to a world of chemi- 
cal substances. The body itself is a world of cells. And we 
may indeed go farther than this. The bees in a hive are not 
held together by any material chain, yet each, in obedience to 
Maeterlinck’s “ Spirit of the Hive,’’ does not hesitate to sacrifice 
itself against an enemy, which would be to the bee’s eye about 
as big as 350 feet in height is to ourselves. The cells in any 
plant are like the bees, all, without exception, working for the 
good of the plant as a whole. We cannot say the same of human 
societies, such as cities or nations, but though we are all intensely 
conscious of our freedom we are generally obliged by some 
cogent reason, as a rule want of money, to do something which 
the good of the community requires. 
Now I should never have said this to you a year ago: it may 
be too fanciful and imaginative, but the tie which unites and 
governs the electrons in the atom or the bees in a hive is not a 
material one. Perhaps you will, however, excuse me on account 
of the imaginative stimulus of this great idea. The birth of this 
theory is interesting, it has risen from the investigation of radium, 
that extraordinary substance of which one ounce is said to possess 
sufficient energy to lift 10,000 tons a mile above the earth. 
Moreover, amongst the many British, French, and _ Italian 
scientists who have been working in a scientific extenze cordiale, it 
is, I think, to Mr J. J. Thomson that the credit is mainly due. 
