HEREDITY 187 



primordial, that they are not the offspring of 

 chance, that they are not an isolated creation, but 

 have sprung by evolution from simpler materials, 

 or perhaps from one single species of matter, 

 I formulate an idea of which it may be said in 

 the scientific world that it is an idea that has 

 long been in the air. Some of the most intelligent 

 chemists, physicists, and philosophers proclaim 

 explicitly their belief that the seventy elements 

 now recognised by chemistry are not the columns 

 of Hercules, which were once thought the limit 

 of investigation." 



Almost at the same moment when Darwin 

 published his theory of transformism appeared, in 

 1863, a classification of bodies which may be 

 regarded as the first attempt to show the continuity 

 of matter ; that is to say, how one chemical element 

 differs from another, in the manner of a rhythm, 

 of something that recalls what we have quoted 

 apropos of music, in which all the sounds start from 

 one initial "do," the others being, as it were, a 

 periodical function of this unity, equivalent to 128 

 vibrations per second. 



To Beguyer de Chancurtois is due the first 

 attempt in chemistry of a classification of this kind, 

 which consists in arranging simple bodies in the 

 increasing order of atomic weight, so that they 

 describe a screw, which the author calls "teluric 



