June 1, 1900] 



KNO WLE DGE 



T3D 



To discuss the affinities of the Musk-Ox on this 

 occasion would obviously be out of place .; but my 

 readers may probably like to be informed of some of the 

 reasons which preclude its being classed either with the 

 oxen or with the sheep. As regards the horns, it will 

 suffice to say tliat they arc quite unlike those of either 

 of the gi'oups in question. From the oxen the animal 

 is broadly distinguished alike by the structure of its 

 upper teeth, and also by its hairy muzzle. But this 

 broad and hairy muzzle, in which there is a narrow, 

 naked and granulw ai'ca immediately above and be- 

 tween the nostrils, is equ.ally unlike the narrow and 

 short-haired muzzle of the sheep and goats. In the 

 structure of its ui)per teeth, as well as in the prescucc 

 of glands below the eyes and of only two mammae in the 

 female, the Musk-Ox is, however, much more like the 

 latter group. But these two latter features* are of no 

 great zoological importance, some sheep lacking face- 

 glands, while one species of goat has four mamma; ; 

 and thty in no wise serve to prove the existence of any 

 close relationship between Musk-Oxeu and sheep. It 

 may be added that the aborted tail of the IVIusk-Ox 

 separates it very widely from the oxen, in all of which 

 this appendage is of great relative length; but in this 

 respect the animal comes neai-er to the sheep, nearly 

 all the wild forms of which have short and stumpy tails. 

 In the extremely late development of the horns (as 

 attested by the survivor of the Wobum pair, which must 

 now be at least a year old) the species seems to stand 

 apart from both groups. 



Judging from the photographs in Dr. Nathorst's 

 account, it would seem that in East Greenland Musk- 

 Oxen arc commonly found in small herds of from eight 

 to nine or a dozen in number. Their favourite haunts 

 seem to Ijc the gently sloping and bouldei'-strewn short 

 valleys at the foot of the cliffs. Here they can be 

 approached without much difficulty and shot down in 

 the open, the members of the herd standing to gaze 

 unconcernedly at the aggressor after one or more of 

 their number has been shot down. When separated 

 from their mothers, the young calves are by no means 

 difficult to capture. I have been told by a friend that 

 during an expedition to Greenland some officers suc- 

 ceeded in capturing a number of these calves, which 

 they were caiTying down on their shoulders to the coast; 

 but the captive animals squealed so loudly as to attract 

 the attention of all the Polar Bears in the neighbour- 

 hood, ^\ hich thereupon started in pursuit and soon 

 induced the unarmed captors to drop their booty ! 



CHEMICAL EVOLUTION. 



A CHAPTER OF HISTORY. 



By G. Cecil Fry. 



The whirligig of time brings its revenges, and the 

 fanciful speculations of chemists about the elements, 

 from the time of Prout onwards, have in recent years 

 found confirmation in a science which no chemist of fifty 

 years ago could imagine as having any relation to 

 chemistry. Astronomy has contributed solid facts to 

 what was merely an attractive theory ; and the spec- 

 troscope, by which this result has been brought about, is 

 an instrument equally important to both sciences. 



• The existence of face-glands as well as the normal presence of 

 onlr two pairs of mamma; has been recently discovered )>y my friend 

 Dr. Einar Loimberg, of Upsala. 



There have In. n : ..linusis Id whom the notion 



of sixty or seventy distinct kinds of matter \v<is unthii'.k- 

 able. Ancient philosophers conceived all the manifold 

 varieties of matter as but different manifestations of one 

 " first matter," or protyle. The old division of matter 

 into four " elements " was physical rather than chemical. 

 The so-called elements were states or conditions of 

 iiiatter, not matter itself. Tlie idea of " protyle " sur- 

 vived long in the minds of alchcmisU; ; but, after a 

 period of oblivion, it was introduced to modern science 

 with a new and .special meaning. 



In 1815 there appeared in the '' Annals of Philo- 

 sophy " an anonymous paper on the relations between 

 specific gi-avities and atomic weights. The following 

 sentence occurs in this paper : " I had often observed 

 the near approach to round numbers of many of the 

 weights of the atoms before 1 was led to investigate the 

 subject." 



This wivs merely a statement of fact or supposed fact; 

 hut in the next volume of the " Annals " a second paper 

 on the same subject appeared, containing a full-fledged 

 hypothesis. The following is the most notable jjart of 

 the paper: — " If the views we have ventured to advance 

 be correct, we may almost consider the protyle of the 

 ancients to be realised in hydrogen; an opinion, by-tlie- 

 by, not altogether new. If wo actually consider this 

 to be the case, and further consider the specific gravities 

 of bodies in their gaseous state to represent the number 

 of volumes condensed into one ; or, in other words, the 

 number of the absolute weight of a single volume of the 

 first matter, protyle, which tlicy contain, which is ex- 

 tremely probable, multiples in weight must always 

 indicate multiples in volume, and vice versa; and the 

 specific gravities or absolute weights of all bodies in a 

 gaseous state must be multiples of the specific gravity or 

 absolute weight of the first matter, protyle, lecause all 

 bodies in a gaseous state which unite with one another 

 unite with reference to their volumes." 



This, then, was " Prout's hypothesis," as it was called 

 when the identity of its author became known. It sup- 

 poses, in brief, that the elements have been formed by 

 successive condensations or polymerisations of hydrogen, 

 the protyle from which all other forms of matter arc 

 derived. 



Prout's idea was taken up with enthusiasm by Thomas 

 Thomson, Professor of Chemistry at Glasgow. He sup- 

 ported it by a series of experiments which was j'l'obably 

 the worst quantitative work ever jJublished in chemical 

 literature. Berzelius reviewed Thomson's results in 

 1827, and hinted very plainly that the experimental 

 part of the work had been done at the writing deak ; 

 in other words, that Thomson had delibera*^ely " faked " 

 his figures in support of an untenable theory. Tlii.3 

 was doubtless untrue, but certainly Thomson's results 

 were grotesquely inaccurate, and his cxjjeriments were 

 carelessly performed by bad methods. 



The atomic weight determinations of Berzelius 

 appeared to have settled Prout's hypothesis altogether 

 in the negative. But, in 1840, Dumas discovei-ed that 

 the great Swedish chemist had made a serious mistake 

 in the atomic weight of carbon, which he found to be 

 12.2. Dumas found it to be almost exactly 12, and became 

 in consequence strongly prepossessed in favour of Prout's 

 hypothesis. His atomic weight determinations were done 

 in the expectation of confirming it. The case of chlorine, 

 however, SLHjmcd irreconcilable, and Marignac suggested 

 a protyle having half the atomic weight of hydi-ogcn as 



