MENDELEEFF 133 



even the law of the conservation of matter (vide the 

 researches of Curie, Kamsay, Landolt, and others). 



In 1902, in a paper entitled "An Attempt towards 

 a Chemical Conception of the Ether," he suggested the 

 existence of two elements having a smaller atomic weight 

 than that of hydrogen, and forming the first two members 

 of the zero group, which comprised the chemically in- 

 active, non-valent gases, helium, neon, argon, xenon, and 

 kryton ; and the first of these two elements he regarded 

 as the ether. He suggested that it is an element having 

 an atomic weight almost incomparably small compared 

 with hydrogen, incapable of forming compounds, but 

 possessing the property, owing to its small atomic weight 

 and extremely high velocity of its atoms, of penetrating 

 and pervading all other substances, just as argon and 

 helium enter into and dissolve in water and other liquids, 

 or hydrogen passes through platinum and palladium. 

 He thinks that coronium, whose spectrum has been found 

 in the solar corona, is one of these two elements, and 

 the ether the other. Of coronium, Mendeleeff says that 

 "it wanders, perhaps for ages, in the regions of space, 

 breaks from the shackles of the earth, and again comes 

 within its sphere, but still it cannot escape from the 

 regions of the sun's attraction, and there are many 

 heavenly bodies of greater mass than the sun." 



In 1887 Mendeleeff worked on the nature of solutions, 

 and he regarded them as " homogeneous liquid systems 



