October 13, 1892] 



NATURE 



569 



ment of an investigator who brings the vitalizing ideas 

 derived from his own work to bear upon a new subject. 

 It was with some such notions as these that we were pre- 

 disposed to welcome Mr. Wilde's attempt to deal with 

 the greatest of all the problems presented by modern 

 chemistry, but a careful consideration of the author's views 

 has, we regret to say, left us in a state of disappointment 

 for reasons which we will endeavour to explain to the 

 readers of Nature. 



The work under consideration is a quarto pamphlet 

 of eighteen pages and a folding table giving the author's 

 and other arrangements of the chemical elements. It 

 consists of a preface dated May 1892, and a paper re- 

 printed with additional notes from the Memoirs of the 

 Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society for 1883 

 and 1887, the results having been first made known in 

 the Proceedings of the same Society for April, 1878. 

 The preface and paper are followed by translations of the 

 same into French. Everything emanating from a recog- 

 nized authority in a distinct department of science is 

 worthy of consideration by chemists, and there are scat- 

 tered throughout the work many statements which we 

 cannot but endorse. There are, moreover, a few sugges- 

 tions here and there which might be fruitful, and al- 

 though the general result is disappointing, it is opportune 

 that the author should have restated his hypothesis at a 

 time when all chemists have more or less assimilated the 

 views of Newlands, Mendel^ef, Lothar Meyer, and their 

 followers. It may be stated at the outset that Mr. Wilde's 

 theory has nothing to do with an electrical origin of the 

 elements as his reputation as an electrician might at first 

 lead us to imagine. 



In very brief terms the author's theory is that the 

 elements have been evolved from hydrogen by a process 

 of nebular condensation. In so far as he regards the 

 elements as polymerides (as we might now express it) of 

 hydrogen, there is nothing new in the idea. It is Prout's 

 hypothesis pure and simple. We are far from asserting 

 that this hypothesis has been disproved ; there is a fas- 

 cinating simplicity about it — it is so much in harmony 

 with the general course of nature that matter should have 

 been evolved from some primordial stuff that we should 

 like it to be true ; but unfortunately the most exact deter- 

 minations of atomic weights have in later times not always 

 conformed to the requirements of the hypothesis. Mr. 

 Wilde in effect, if not in words, says tant pis pour les 

 faits ' These numbers ought to be whole multiples of 

 the atomic weight of hydrogen, and Mr. Wilde un- 

 hesitatingly makes them so. In some cases the dis- 

 crepancy between the observed atomic weights and those 

 calculated from the theory is so great— apart from the 

 doubling or other manipulation of some of the old numbers 

 — that this alone will damage his case in the eyes of those 

 who know the scrupulous care taken and the variety of 

 methods resorted to in order to secure purity of material 

 in such determinations. We give a few examples : — 



^"'^W^igl,'"'"''' Calculated. 



Cu ... 63-18 ... 62 



Be ... 908 ... 8 



Sc ... 43'97 ••• 42 



Ga ... 69-9 96 



Y ... 889 ... 123 



In ... 113-6 ... 150 



Ta ... 182 ... 185 



■'^'"''Weigt't!'"''' Calculated. 



Cr ... 5245 ... 54 



W ... 183-6 ... 186 



Si ... 282 ... 35 



Ni ... 5S-6 ... 56 



Co ... s8-6 ... 56 



Ir ... 192-5 ... 196 



Os ... 191-12 ... 196 



A large number of atomic weights not given above differ 

 by one unit from the experimental results ; in fact, more 

 than half the existing determinations are in the light of 

 the present theory erroneous to a most humiliating e.xtent. 

 We are not bigoted in our faith respecting the unas- 

 sailable accuracy of the determinations of these con- 

 stants ; we all know the enormous difficulties which meet 

 the chemist in his attempts to obtain his compounds in a 

 state of purity. In one part of his paper the author sug- 



NO. I 198, VOL. 46] 



gests "that slight differences in the determinations may 

 arise from the latent affinity which some elements have 

 for minute quantities of another," which is a reasonable 

 supposition in its way, although not very happily ex- 

 pressed. But later he somewhat inconsistently remarks 

 " that these discrepancies are due to . . . some unknown 

 caiise which prevents their \i.e. Cu, Zn, &c.] true atomic 

 weights from being ascertained." 



From a purely philosophical standpoint the author's 

 proposed emendations of the atomic weights are perfectly 

 legitimate. If it can be satisfactorily proved that these 

 constants are the numerical consequences of some 

 general law requiring that the relative combining weights 

 referred to hydrogen should be whole numbers, it is cor- 

 rect to conclude that our determinations are, through 

 experimental error, difficulty of separation, &c., faulty. 

 That some such law e.xists has been surmised again and 

 again, but unfortunately the proof has not yet been found. 

 Now the central idea of Mr. Wildes paper is that there 

 is an analogy between Bode's law of the planetary dis- 

 tances and the numerical relationships between the 

 atomic weights, and he even attempts to show that this 

 analogy is the result of a causal connection between the 

 phenomena. This is the most important suggestion in 

 the work, as the whole novelty centres in this idea, and 

 the subsequent acceptance of his views will turn upon the 

 strength of his case in demonstrating these two points : 

 first, that Bode's " law " is the expression of a physical 

 reality ; and, secondly, that the numerical relations 

 between the atomic weights are the physical expressions 

 of a causal connection between the distances of the 

 planets and the condensation of the primordial matter 

 (.' hydrogen.) 



The first point is purely astronomical, and we prefer to 

 let astronomers speak on the subject. Prof. Simon New- 

 comb says (" Popular Astronomy ") : — 



It is true that many ingenious people employ themselves 

 from time to time in working out numerical relations between 

 the distances of the planets, their masses, their times of rotation, 

 and so on, and will probably continue to do so ; because the 

 number of such relations wliicfi can be made to come somewhere 

 near to exact numbers is very great. This, however, does not 

 indicate any law of nature. If we take forty or fifty numbers of 

 any kind — say the years in which a few persons were born ; their 

 ages in years, months, and days at some particular event in their 

 lives ; the numbers of the houses in which they lived ; and so 

 on — we should find as many curious relations among the numbers 

 as have ever been found among those of the planetary system. 



The author thus gets but little support from astronomy 

 and it is to be observed that in the list of planetary dis- 

 tances which he gives he stops short at Uranus ; Neptune 

 occupies an awkward position for Bode's " law." The 

 flight which is taken in connecting this "law" with the 

 atomic weights is, however, a bold one and worthy of 

 being given m the author's own words. After stating the 

 nebular hypothesis he says : — 



That this gaseous or primordial substance consisted of a 

 chaotic mixture of the sixty-hve elements known to chemists is 

 a notion too absurd to be entertained by any one possessing the 

 faculty of philosophic thinking, as the regular gradation of pro- 

 perties observable in certain series of elements clearly shows 

 that elementary species are not eternal, but have a history, which 

 it is the proper object of physical science to unfold. 



With this we most cordially agree, and as the same 

 idea has been repeatedly expressed by chemists and 

 physicists, we do not imagine that it is likely to be contro- 

 verted. Then he continues : — 



One of the principal facts which, to my mind, establishes 

 the nebular theory of the formation of planetary systems on a 

 firm basis is Bode's empirical law of the distances of the mem- 

 bers of the .solar system from each other and from the central 

 body, as in this law is comprehended the idea of nebular con- 

 densation in definite proportions. Now, if elementary species 

 were created from a homogeneous substance possessing a 



