l>RSir>ENT*S ADDRESS. 5 



we cannot help coming to the conclusion that it is under the 

 influence of a directing power, which can only be attributed to 

 that of a beneficent Creator. 



The X Rays were discovered by Professor Rontgen in 

 1900. He found that, under certain circumstances, various 

 substances can be brought into conditions affecting the 

 ordinary photograph-plate and penetrating opaque bodies 

 according to their density and relative thickness. The 

 rays are produced by a special form of electrical currents in 

 connection with some influorescent substance, which becomes 

 luminous to opaque objects, making them transparent when 

 under their influence. Wood, carbon, slate, leather, are more 

 transparent to the X Rays than glass. Paper is so transparent 

 that they will pass through a book of a thousand pages. 

 Flesh and skin are translucent, while bone is opaque. Their 

 use has been found most valuable in the South African war ; 

 they indicate the exact position of the bullet or missile in the 

 limb or body. The photograph on the wall shows plainly the 

 injury to the heel-bone (calcaneum) of a young soldier (formerly 

 educated in my Boys' Home) in the King's Liverpool Regiment 

 incurred at the siege of Ladysmith. The exact position of the 

 fragment of a shell and a piece of the boot was indicated under 

 the direction of the X Rays, and was the means of saving the 

 gallant soldier's leg. 



The identification of Helium, by Frankland and Lockyer, about 

 the year 1870, as present in the corona of the Sun was revealed 

 by the spectroscope during an eclipse. The nature of the 

 substance remained in doubt until 1895, when Professor W. 

 Ramsay proved it to be equally a terrestrial element, associated 

 with uranite, a mineral in which nitrogen and argon are its 

 component parts. In the same year Lord Rayleigh and Professor 

 W. Ramsay were the first to discover another gaseous element, 

 Argon, which constitutes about one per cent, of the atmosphere, 

 and is present in certain minerals and in meteoric-iron. After 

 much patience the discoverers found a means to separate it 

 from the Nitrogen of the atmosphere, with which it had been 



