16 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[NOVEJIBEE 1, 1887. 



SIR HENRY ROSCOE ON ATOMS. 



|HE general press has done scant justice to 

 Sir Henry Eoscoe's Presidential Address to 

 the British Association, the Times leading 

 the way in speaking of it as too- technical 

 both in subject and treatment. Doubtless 

 it is so for the majority of readers, who need 

 everything pounded into pemmican or con- 

 densed into a sort of Liebig's Extract, but not for those who 

 desire to know as far as can be known everything about 

 something rather than something about everything. Sir 

 Henry wisely talked on the subject of which he knows 

 most, and bis words were as admirable and clear as his 

 substance was weighty and suggestive. 



After justifying the researches of the chemist by their 

 economical results, he pointed out how at the back of all 

 speculations concerning the nature of the motions of which 

 matter is the vehicle, there lies the profoundly interesting 

 question as to the nature and mutual relations of the atoms 

 themselves, the building materials of the universe, and which 

 have known no change amidst the ever-changing combina- 

 tions into which they enter. 



Eighty years ago, Dal ton, working in no luxurious labora- 

 tory.but "with the meagre apparatus of a few cups, penny 

 ink-bottles and self-made thermometers and barouieters, dis- 

 covered that a'oms combine in deBnite proportions of weight 

 and volume with other atoms. He thereby changed 

 chemistry from a qualitative to a quantitative science, 

 giving an impetus to research which at last promises to 

 bring us within sight of the fulfilment of Faraday's 

 prophecy, that " in the end there will be found one 

 element with two polarities." Many workers followed on 

 the lines laid down by Dalton ; notably Prout, who formu- 

 lated the theory that the atomic weights are multiples of 

 the atomic weight of hydrogen, the lightest of the .so-called 

 elements, and which he argued might be regarded as the 

 primordial element, the materia prima, from which the 

 others are formed by successive condensations. 



The researches of the past few years establish the fact 

 that certain of the elements possess such strongly marked 

 likenesses as to warrant their classification into groups, but 

 the.se groups did not appear to be connected with one 

 another, nor to have any relation to the f;xr larger number 

 of elements not falling into groups. Recently, however, a 

 marked advance towards proof of the common origin of all 

 the elements has been made, in which an English chemist 

 (Newlands) led the van, but in which a Eussian chemist 

 (Mendelejelf) has outstripped him in showing that if the 

 seventy "elements" which have thus far been discovered 

 are arranged " in the order of their atomic weights from 

 hydrogen as 1, to uranium, the heaviest, as 240, the series 

 does not exhibit continuous advance, but breaks up into a 

 number of sections, in each of which the several terms pre- 

 sent analogies with the corresponding terms of other series. 

 Thus, the whole series does not run a, b, c, d, e, f, 

 g, h, ic, (fee, but a, b, c, d ; A, B, C, D ; «, fi, y, 8, 

 and so on, in recurring similarities." In this we have 

 a periodic law, as it is called, which embraces all 

 the elements according to the increasing value of_ their 

 atomic weights, and which has restored to their rightful 

 place in the succession certain elements for which no place 

 in any of the series of groups could be found. More than 

 this, .and as evidencing to the fruitful play of the imagina- 

 tion, ISlendelejeB', finding certain gaps between neighbouring 

 elements, pointed out that they could only be filled by 

 elements possessing chemical and physical properties which 

 he accurately specified. And, sure enough, some of these 

 vacancies have been filled by the discovery of elements with 



the properties which Mendelejefi' predicted they must possess. 

 This is as interesting a romance as the discovery of Neptune, 

 the existence of which, it will be remembered, M. le Verrier 

 and Professor Adams independently deduced from the 

 anomalous movements of Uranus, and which " floated into 

 the ken " of Dr. Galle at Berlin when he pointed his 

 telescope to that part of the heavens where the mathema- 

 ticians told him he wovild find the planet. 



Commenting on this significant grouping of atoms, Pro- 

 fessor Huxley, in his masteily siu'vey of the progress of 

 science in Mr. Humphry Ward's " Eeign of Queen Victoria," 

 says that it " is a conception with which biologists are 

 very familiar, animal and ])lant groups constantly appearing 

 as series of parallel modifications of similar yet different 

 primary forms. In the living world, facts of this kind are 

 now understood to mean evolution from a common proto- 

 type. It is difiicult to imagine that in the not-Hving world 

 they are devoid of significance. Is it not possible, nay pro- 

 bable, that they may mean the evolution of our ' elements ' 

 from a primary form of matter? Fifty years ago such a 

 suggestion would have been scouted as a revival of the 

 dreams of the alchemists. At present it may be said to be 

 the burning question of physico-chemical science." And 

 although no known energy heat that we ain apply Gin 

 separate any one atom into two, so that, as Dalton said, 

 " no man can split an atom," we do not any longer speak 

 of it as indivisible ; all that can be said is that it has not 

 yet been divided. That triumph awaits the chemistry of 

 the future, and, when it is accomplished, the witness to the 

 imity of the universe will be complete. 



coucealcL 



SHAKESPEARE AND BACON.* 



By Benvolio. 



' Though in thy stores' account I one must be ; 

 For nothing hold me, so it i^lease thee hold 

 That nothing me, a something sweet to thee : 

 Make but my name thy love, and love that still. 

 And then thou lov'st me, for m)' name is WILL." 

 Ska Iirfjica re's " i'onnets." 



N" the -'Nineteenth Century" for May 1886 

 an article appeared, in which a particularly pre- 

 posterous development of the absurd Baconian 

 theory of Shakespeare's plays was brought 

 before the notice of Shakespearean students. 

 We were assured that Mr. Ignatius Donnelly 

 had discovered a cipher which had been craftily 

 within the folio edition of Shakespeare's plays, 

 published after his death, and that in two or three months 

 Mr. Donnelly would publish most surprising readings from 

 the cipher. It does not seem that Shakespearean scholars 

 were very much impressed. The best of them all, the late 

 Dr. Baynes, editor of the '• Encyclopaedia Britannica," 

 brought out half a year later an appreciative essay on 

 Shakespeare, in which the Baconian theory was not even 

 mentioned. And now Mr. Donnelly feels moved to repeat 

 his assertions and to renew his promises. 



In the first |)lace, Mr. Donnelly has persuaded himself 

 that Bacon took special interest in planning cipher systems 

 by which recoi-ds, such as could not safely be published, 



* It is proposed to enter presently in these columns into the 

 study of Shakespeare's nature as unconsciously disclosed in his 

 works, whence also something of his life may perhaps be gleaned. 

 The present essay, from the American " Forum " for October, may 

 be regarded as fitly introducing the series of papers thus planned, 

 llr. Donnelly's foolish assault on the character and capacity oE 

 Shakespeare having in reality (absurd though it was in itself) 

 started tlie line of thought of which the proposed series of papers 

 will be the outcome. 



