
INORGANIC EVOLUTION 15 
electric spark of extremely high potential. While 
in the third group, or stars of lowest temperature, 
the gases disappear almost entirely, and the metals 
exist in the state produced by the electric arc, that 
is, with more complicated spectra. 
This is the kind of evidence afforded by a study 
of the stars. It is surely most impressive. We 
find the hottest stars containing the fewest elements, 
and these gradually increasing in the cooler stars. 
Nay, more, the elements which appear first are the 
lightest (that is, have the lowest atomic weights), 
and as a rule they appear in the order of their 
atomic weights. Again, the metallic elements 
always first appear in their dissociated or simplified 
state, and later in their normal form. Thus we 
have laboratory evidence of the dissociating effect 
of great heat upon the elements; and we have 
stellar evidence strongly pointing to the fact that as 
the stars cool, and the disintegrating effects of heat 
diminish, different chemical elements come _ into 
being, by reason of more and more complex com- 
binations of some _ primordial element — the 
hypothetical ‘“protyle” of Crookes, or what he 
subsequently made known to us as constituents of 
Lae cathode tays,-the “‘corpuscles”’ or “electrons” 
of modern science. 
Lhe Disintegration of Atons 
The above-mentioned evidence supplied by the 
spectroscope for the occurrence of “ dissociation,” 
that is, disintegration of the atoms of elements under 
the disruptive influence of heat, has been rendered 
