RADIUM AND THE GLOW-WORM. 59 



Radium and the Glow-worm. 



Radium is the latest wonder of the scientific world. The glow- 

 worm is one of the oldest of the mysteries which have attracted the 

 study of naturalists. It may be that the knowledge gained from 

 radium is to teach us at last how the glow-worm emits its flashes 



of light. 



The suggestion is made by Sir Oliver Lodge in the Juh^ number 

 of The Ninteenth Century and After, not as a result of study, but 

 as a hint to investigators. It comes at the close of a most interest- 

 ing description of the electric theory of the construction of matter, 

 toward which all the latest discoveries seem to point. 



Sir Oliver says that in addition to the forms of energy which 

 have previouslj'^ been recognized we must now give consideration 

 to the energy of the electrons, or parts, of which the atoms of mat- 

 ter are hypothetically composed. As atoms break up and bombard 

 the world with their electrons the flying fragments sometimes 

 strike a phosphorescent obstacle and make a flash of light, and 

 sometimes they strike other atoms of the same subject and their 

 energy subsides into heat. Sir Oliver describes these processes 

 and tells also of the various forms of rays that are emitted and 

 their qualities. 



" Can it be," he then asks, "that the light emitted by the glow- 

 worm is emitted because the insect has learned how to control the 

 breaking down of atoms, so as to enable their internal energy in 

 the act of transmutation to take the form of useful light, instead 

 of the useless form of an insignificant amount of heat or other 

 kind of radiation effect? " 



If the long and laborious work of M. and Mme. Curie, by means 

 of which they succeeded in extracting a minute quantity of a new 

 element from tons of a useless mineral, pitchblende, is thus to 

 have the indirect result of teaching us how the glow-worm is able 

 to glow, it will be a most curious illustration of the way in which 

 all the forces of the universe are bound together, so that the 

 knowledge of no one of them is without importance to us in the 

 understanding of all the others. — Chicago Record-Herald. 



And yet I connot fly from them : swarms haunt the very air 

 which I breathe — what do I say ? float in the fluids of my body. 

 It is my interest to know them. But my sovereign interest is to 

 escape from my deplorable and wretched ignorance, and not to 

 quit this world until I have peered into the infinite. — Michelet. 



