CONTENTS 



WHAT THIS WORLD IS MADE OF 



The limits of the divisibility of substances, and the con- 

 clusions to which the study of their limits has led What 

 familiar things like soap-bubbles and gold-leaf may tell 

 us of the size of molecules and atoms . . . Page 103 



PROGRESS TOWARDS AN EXPLANATION OF 

 ELECTRICITY 



Benjamin Franklin's ideas, and how they seem, in the light 

 of recent developments, to offer the best explanation of 

 this mysterious " fluid " The electrical atom . Page 131 



THE SEARCH FOR PRIMAL MATTER 



What are the atoms made of? A detailed account of the 

 ingenious experiments of Sir William Crookes, Professor 

 J. J. Thomson, and others, disclosing the existence of par- 

 ticles of matter a thousand times smaller than the small- 

 est atom The nature of these "corpuscles" . Page 145 



THE RISE OF SYNTHETIC CHEMISTRY AND ITS 

 FOUNDER 



The fertile career of M. Berthelot, the greatest of living 

 chemists What he has accomplished; what he hopes 

 synthetic chemistry may do Page 169 



BORDERING THE MYSTERIES OF LIFE AND MIND 



The remarkable discoveries of Professor Loeb, of artificial 

 parthenogenesis, and the relations of electricity and the 

 life - processes Professor Albert P. Mathew's experi- 

 ments on the nerves, and his explanation of nervous 



action Page 199 



viii 



