August i8, 1898J 



NATURE 



383 



The following list of candidates successful in this year's com- 

 petition for the Whitworth Scholarships and Exhibitions, has 

 been issued by the Department of Science and Art :— Scholar- 

 ships of 125/. a year, tenable for three years— Charles E. 

 Goodyear, Devonport ; John H. Grindley, Oldham ; Harry E. 

 Wimperis, Bath ; George Service, Cambuslang. Exhibitions 

 of 50/. a year, tenable for one year— William V. Shearer, 

 Glasgow ; William Alexander, Glasgow ; Albert Hall, London ; 

 Aidan N. Henderson, Edinburgh ; Alec W. Q'uennell, London ; 

 Victor G. Alexander, Portsmouth ; George S. Taylor, Devon- 

 port ; Joel T- Lee, Portsmouth ; George Donington, Lincoln ; 

 John E. Tagger, Manchester ; George A. Inglis, Glasgow ; 

 "Leslie H.'Hounsfield, London; William M. Selvey, Devon- 

 port ; Ernest A. Forward, London ; James J. Mills, Plumstead ; 

 Robert M. Neilson, Glasgow ; William A. Barnes, Horwich 

 (Lanes.); Francis P. Johns, Torpoint ; Herbert H. Johnson, 

 Liverpool ; William T. Williams, London ; Frederick Charles- 

 worth, Crewe ; William A. Craven, Birken- 

 head ; George A. Barber, Manchester ; 

 Hugh M. Macmillan, Govan ; James C. 

 Macfarlane, Cathcart ; George G. Sumner, 

 Manchester ; Charles L. Vaughan, Plum- 

 stead ; William E. M. Curnock, Liverpool ; 

 Francis D. Moulang, Inchicore (Dublin) ; 

 John Webster, Gateshead. 



H He Li Gl 

 CI Ar K Ca 



B C N 

 Sc Ti V 



Br Kr Rb Sr Yt Zx Nb Mo 

 I - Cs Ba La Ce ( ) ( ) 



- () 



00 Ta W 



— Th — Ur 



F Na Mg Al Si P S 



MnFeNJCo Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se 

 RhRu-Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te 

 ()()()()() 



( ) 

 IrPtOs 



Au Hg Tl Pb Bi 



The bracketed spaces between cerium and tantalum are 

 probably occupied by elements of the didymium and erbium 

 groups. Their chemical properties are not known with sufficient 

 accuracy to enable their positions to be well defined. They all 

 give coloured absorption spectra, and have atomic weights be- 

 tween these limits. Positions marked by a dash ( — ) are waiting 

 for future discoverers to fill up. 



Let me suppose that at the birth of the elements, as we now 

 know them, the action of the vis generatrix might be diagram- 

 matically represented by a journey to and fro in cycles along a 

 figure-of-eight path, while, simultaneously, time is flying on, and 

 some circumstance by which the element-forming cause is con- 



SOCIE TIES AND AC A DEMIES. 



London. 



Royal Society, June 9.—" On the 

 Position of Helium, Argon, and Krypton 

 in the Scheme of Elements." By Sir 

 William Crookes, F.R.S. 



It has been found difficult to give the 

 elements argon and helium (and I think 

 the same difficulty will exist in respect to 

 the gas krypton) their proper place in the 

 scheme of arrangement of the elements 

 which we owe to the ingenuity and 

 scientific acumen of Newlands, Mendeleef 

 and others. Some years ago, carrying a 

 little further Prof. Emerson Reynolds's 

 idea of representing the scheme of ele- 

 ments by a zigzag line, I thought of 

 projecting a scheme in three dimensional 

 space, and exhibited at one of the meet- 

 ings of the Chemical Society^ a model illustrating my views. 

 Since that time, I have rearranged the positions then assigned 

 to some of the less known elements in accordance with later 

 atomic weight determinations, and thereby made the curve more 

 symmetrical. 



Many of the elemental facts can be well explained by sup- 

 posing the space projection of the scheme of elements to be a 

 spiral. This curve is, however, inadmissible, inasmuch as the 

 curve has to pass through a point neutral as to electricity and 

 chemical energy twice in each cycle. We must therefore adopt 

 some other figure. A figure-of-eight will foreshorten into a 

 zigzag as well as a spiral, and it fulfils every condition of the 

 problem. Such a figure will result from three very simple 

 simultaneous motions. First, an oscillation to and fro (suppose 

 east and west); secondly, an oscillation at right angles to the 

 former (suppose north and south); and thirdly, a motion at right 

 angles to these two (suppose downwards), which, in its simplest 

 form, would be with unvarying velocity. 



I take any arbitrary and convenient figure-of-eight, without 

 reference to its exact nature ; I divide each of the loops into 

 eight equal parts, and then drop from these points ordinates 

 corresponding to the atomic weights of the first cycle of 

 elements. I have here a model representing this figure pro- 

 jected in space ; in it the elements are supposed to follow one 

 another at equal distances along the figure-of-eight spiral, a gap 

 of one division being left at the point of crossing. The vertical 

 height is divided into 240 equal parts on which the atomic 

 weights are plotted, from H = i to Ur = 239-59. Each black 

 disc represents an element, and is accurately on a level with its 

 atomic weight on the vertical scale. 



The accompanying figure, photographed from the solid model, 

 illustrates the proposed arrangement. The elements falling one 

 under the other along each ofthe vertical ordinates, are— 

 1 Presidential address to the Chemical Society, March 28, 1888. 



NO. 1503, VOL. 58] 



ditioned {e.g. temperature) is declining ; (variations which I 

 have endeavoured to represent by the downward slope). The 

 result of the first cycle may be represented in the diagram by 

 supposing that the unknown formative cause has scattered along 

 its journey the groupings now called hydrogen, lithium, glucinum, 

 boron, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, fluorine, sodium, magnesium, 

 aluminium, silicon, phosphorus, sulphur, and chlorine. But the 

 swing of the pendulum is not arrested at the end of the first 

 round. It still proceeds on its journey, and had the conditions 

 remained constant, the next elementary grouping generated 

 would again be lithium, and the original cycle would eternally 

 reappear, producing again and again the same fourteen elements. 

 But the conditions are not quite the same. Those represented 

 by the two mutually rectangular horizontal components of the 

 motion (say chemical and electrical energy) are not materially 

 modified ; that to which the vertical component corresponds 

 has lessened, and so, instead of lithium being repeated by 

 lithium, the grouping which forms the commencement of the 

 second cycle is not lithium, but its lineal descendant, potassium. 



It is seen that each coil of the lemniscate track crosses the 

 neutral line at lower and lower points. This line is neutral 

 as to electricity, and neutral as to chemical action. Electro- 

 positive elements are generated on the northerly or retreating 

 half of the swing, and electronegative elements on the southerly 

 or approaching half. Chemical atomicity is governed by dis- 

 tance from the central point of neutrality ; monatomic elements 

 being one remove from it, diatomic elements two removes, and 

 so on. Paramagnetic elements congregate to the left of the 

 neutral line, and diamagnetic elements to the right. With few 

 exceptions, all the most metallic elements lie on the north. 



Till recently chemists knew no element which had not more 

 or less marked chemical properties, but now by the researches of 

 Lord Rayleigh and Prof. Ramsay, we are brought face to face 

 with a group of bodies with apparently no chemical properties. 



