ELISHA MITCHELL SCIENTIFIC SOCIETY 7 
tubes, noting the effect of weight, of composition, upon them 
in transpiration. He follows them as they enter into liquids 
and pass out, and as they are absorbed or dissolved by colloid 
bodies; he attentively inquires if they are absorbed by metals 
in a similar manner, and finds remotest analogies which, by 
their boldness, compel one to stop reading and to think if 
they really be possible.” 
In his paper entitled ‘Speculative Ideas respecting the Con- 
stitution of Matter,’ published in the Proceedings of the Roy- 
al Society in 1863, which Thorpe calls his ‘Confession of 
Faith,’he tells of his conception that these supposed elements 
of ours may possess one and the same ultimate or atomic 
molecule existing in different conditions of movement. 
It is not possible for me, in the limits of this address, to 
array before you all of the various evidence which leads to 
the belief that our so-called elementary atoms are after all 
but compounds of an intimate, peculiar nature whose dissocia- 
tion we have as yet been unable to accomplish. When prop- 
erly marshalled, it gives a very staggering blow to the old 
faith. Thorpe speaks of the ‘‘old metaphysical quibble con- 
cerning the divisibility or indivisibility of the atom.” To 
Graham ‘‘the atom meant something which is not divided, 
not something which cannot be divided.” The original indi- 
visible atom may be something far down in the make-up of 
the molecule. 
How shall the question as to the composite nature of the 
elements be approached? The problem has been attacked from 
the experimental side several times during the last half cen- 
tury, but the work seems to have been carried on after a de- 
sultory fashion and was soon dropped, as if the workers were 
convinced of its uselessness. The results, being negative, 
simply serve to show that no method was hit upon for 
decomposing the elements upon which the experiments were 
performed. Thus, for instance,Despretz performed a number 
of experiments to combat Dumas’ views as to the composite 
nature of the elements. Despretz made use of the well- 
known laboratory methods for the separation and purification 
of substances. Such were distillation, electrolysis, fractional 
