DISCOVERY 



185 



Chalk formation, is very different from that of the 

 Lower and Middle varieties of Barton and Melton Ross. 

 The chalk contains an abundance of flint which renders 

 it quite unsuitable for the manufacture of cement or 

 lime. The quarry' was dug on a \-ery big scale in 1906 

 to supply hard iUling material in the construction of 

 Immingham Dock, and has a face of 300 yards and is 

 77 feet deep. It consists of : 



Light brown loamy claj', boulder clav 



Chalk 



Thick seara of flint . . . .10 12 o 



Hard chalk vrith at least 5 flint layers 



6 in. thick with afossiliferous layer 



at the base . . . • 30 5 4-2 5 



Chalk with 6 thin seams of flint, main 



working floor . . . . 15 4 57 9 



Chalk with z thin seams of flint with 



fossiliferous layer at base . .60 63 9 



Chalk with 7 thin seams of flint 3 in. to 



6 in. thick, some of which are pink 



lowest working floor . . .80 7 1 9 



Chalk with 2 seams of flint . -53 77 o 



Several urchins, typical of the Upper Chalk, found 

 bv the writer were identified by Dr. H. L. Hawkins, 

 namely Hoi. Sternotaxis planus and Micraster. sp., low 

 zonal form, and the pretty fish's tooth, Oxyrhinca 

 mantelli. 



My thanks are due to Mr. G. M. Borns and Mr. \\". H. 

 Wicks for much help in the preparation of these notes- 



From the Vague to the 

 Concrete in Science 



By D. Eraser Harris, M.D., D.Sc. 



Professor ol Physiology in Dalhousie Uniuersily, Halifax, \.S. 



There are several examples in the history of science 

 where an idea at first represented by some purely 

 metaphorical expression became in course of time a 

 concrete existence. Most of the sciences have in- 

 stances of it : one meets at first with a notion, often 

 of the vaguest, a principle, a property, a potentiality^ 

 for something or other, and one ends with a substance, 

 a species of matter, tangible and ponderable ; the 

 notion has become incarnated. 



Examples in Inorganic Chemistry 



Inorganic chemistry offers us an excellent case of 

 this process. When Lavoisier was working out the 

 character of the substance we now know as oxygen, 

 he had not isolated oxygen by a stroke of genius and 

 then proceeded to study the properties of the new 

 chemical product ; the history of its discovery is far 

 otherwise. Acting on some hints given him in October 



1774 by the Englishman, Joseph Priestley (1733-1804), 

 Lavoisier (1743-1794) came upon what he soon named 

 as the "principle of acids " or the " acidifying prin- 

 ciple " : his own words written in 1777 were — 



" I shall therefore designate dephlogisticated 

 air, air eminently respirable, when in a state of 

 combination or fixedness, by the name of acidi- 

 fying principle or, if one prefers the same meaning 

 in a Greek dress, by that of o.xygine principle." 



Here it is a " principle," something which combines 

 with metals when they are calcined or burned in air ; 

 it is that something which to Lavoisier seemed essential 

 in acids, that which produced acidity, the oxygine 

 principle. Its later and more familiar form of 

 ' ' oxygen ' ' is better etymologically. Now that which 

 was a principle in 1777 became, a hundred and twenty 

 years afterwards, a visible, tangible entity. The 

 " principle " of 1777 had become a substance by 1897 ; 

 the metaphor had become, an actuality. 



The word " gas " is itself an example of what we are 

 thinking about. " Gas " and " bias " were arbitrary 

 words coined by van Helmont in 1630 to signify two 

 things in physiological chemistry : the one, carbon 

 dio.\ide, the other, some super-material power or 

 agency which was supposed to direct the activities 

 of living matter. In the course of time not only 

 carbon dioxide, but many other gases, became known, 

 and ultimately were isolated and even made visible 

 in the liquid state ; whereas " bias " is still the meta- 

 physical concept it ever was. "Gas" has literally 

 materialised because it referred to a form of matter ; 

 " bias " has never got outside the cjncept or brain 

 of the philosopher. 



Not aU chemical concepts have been equally fortunate 

 in leading to actual and individual chemical substances ; 

 phlogiston, for instance, denoting, as it did, no reality, 

 is phlogiston the concept still. The principle of heat, 

 phlogiston, was supposed to leave a body when it was 

 burned ; the theory of Stahl (1697) asserted that heat 

 was a thing — a thing which could depart from a body 

 and leave it lighter than previously when it was cold. 

 Now this, as a conception, is quite satisfactory, but as 

 it is not true in fact, phlogiston never materialised ; 

 it w-as never isolated from matter because it never 

 existed in matter. Phlogiston was as barren as 

 "oxygine" was pregnant. To-day Priestley and 

 Lavoisier could be presented with kilogrammes of 

 the " oxygine " principle, but not a milligramme of 

 phlogiston could be extracted for Stahl, because 

 oxygen is a substance, but heat is a mode of motion. 



The Case of the Molecule 



Chemistry furnishes us with another example of 

 the thing in the mind, becoming ultimately a thing 



