January lo, 1895] 



NATURE 



245 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 



[ The Editor does not hold himself reipotnible for opinions ex- 

 pressed by his correspondents. Ntither can he undertake 

 to return, or to correspond with the writers of, rejected 

 manuscripts intended for this or any other part of Nature. 

 No notice is taken of anonymous communications.} 



On the Liquefaction of Gases — A Claim for Priority. 



Ever since the year iSSj.I have been almosi uninterrufjledly 

 engaged in the examination of the behaviour of the so-called 

 (jermanent ga-es at very low le iiperatures. During the fir-.i 

 few m'lnihs I performed my experiments t gether with the laic 

 Prof. Wio .lew>ki ; afterwards, during a series of years, I was 

 alone; an I more lately, I went through several inve^-tigiti'ins 

 with Prof. Wiikuw^ki. The results uf my researche-. t published 

 in the PdIisH, French, and German languages, whiKt they were 

 going on; in the Reports of the Crac iw Acaleny, of the 

 Vienna .\ ademy, in IVicdemann s Annalen, and in the Comptes 

 rendus. My researches are thus well known lo the sciciciitic 

 world, and I may add, without boasiing, that they have been 

 acknowledged by learned men o( dilTerent nationalities ; they 

 were also known to Prof. Dewar, who repealed ihem several 

 times, and always confirmed my results — th')se, lor instance, 

 on the absorption spectrum and the bluish colour of liijuid 

 oxygen, and on the liquefaction of ozone. 



Prof. Ucwar at fir t duly acknowledged those of my experi- 

 ments which he repeateil, but afrerwaids he changed his b - 

 haviour, and in the lectures which he gave in l.ie Koyal 

 Institution, and during which he liquefied lar^e quantities of 

 oxygen and air, he never again mentioned that his experinirnts 

 were merely repetitions of mine,performed and pu'ilislicd several 

 years before. This is, perhaps, the reas n why the hn^lish 

 public, which attended those lectures, grew convinced that the 

 liquelaction of oxygen, and other so-called permanent gases, lias 

 been achieved for ihe fist time by Prof. Dewar ; and it may be 

 that the Rumford medal awarded by ihe Royal Society to Prof. 

 Dewar, tor the labouis which I was the first boih to perform and 

 to publish, is due to those very lectures. That my labouis should 

 thus have been passed over in silence, is all the inoie astonish- 

 ing, because as soon as the description of my apparatus, serving 

 10 Uquely large quantiiies of oxygen and air, was published in 

 1890, I sent him a reprint of it fiom the Bulletin International 

 de V Academic de Cracovie. A brief report ot iheapparaius is 

 also cjniained in the Beiblutter oi Wiedemann (vol. xv. p. 29), 

 under the title, " K. Olszewski : Ubcr das Giessen de» flii^sigen 

 Sauerstoi't'i." 



Tnere is here no space for me to enumerate all my 

 investigations as regards the liquefaction and solidincaiion of 

 the gases in question ; but I intend shortly to puolish 111 the 

 English language a more compleie summary of my works, by 

 which the English public will be enabled 10 see that only a 

 small part of the rest-arches which were performed bv Prof. 

 Dewar ought lo be attributed to hiiu. For the present, I will only 

 state that all ihe so-called permanent gases (hydrogen alone 

 excepted) were liquefied in quantity lor the first time by 

 me, and that I determined their ciiiical points and boiling 

 points ; that nitrogen, carbon monoxide, nitric oxide, and 

 methane were also solidified, and their Ireezing points deter 

 mined. By means of solid nitrogen I obtained the lo-^vest 

 temperal ure that ever has been both obtained and measured, 

 viz. —225". Many other gases and liquids were frozen, anii 

 their freezing pomts determined for the first lime by me. 1 

 must finally remark that I also gave public lectures on the sub- 

 ject in Crac*w ; the first in 1S90, during which I obtained, in 

 the presence of over a hundred students, 100 c.cm. of liquid 

 oxygen ; the second in July 1891, duiing the Congiess of l\»lish 

 Naturalists and Physicians, and then I obtained 2C0 c.cm 01 

 liquid oxygen in tiie |)res=nce of a good many nauralisls, and 

 showed its bluish colour and its absorption spectrum. The 

 only reason that I have never hitherto employed a larger 

 quantity of liquid oxygen or air than 200 c.cm. was the circum- 

 stance that this quantity was quite sufficient for my expert 

 ments ; for my apparatus can be enlarged at will without 

 changing anything in its construction. I have very often used 

 large quantities of liquid oxygen and air whilst aitempling lo 

 liquefy hydrogen, and to determine its criiical pressure, as well 

 as to inquire into the optical properties oi liquid oxygen, as is 

 proved liy the whole series of researches, performed together 

 with Prof. Witkowski. Charles Oi.sztiWSKi. 



University of Cracow, Austria-Hungary, December, 1894. 



I HAVE read the letter of Charles Olszewski, and but for your 

 courtesy in drawing my attention to it would have allowed it to 

 pass without notice. Considering the Koyal Society, in the 

 year 1878, awarded the Davy medal to Cailletet and Piclcl 

 lor their achievements of the liquefaction of ihe so-called 

 permanent gases, it is hardly likely I could put forward 

 in England any claim for such a re-ult. A reference to the 

 f'roceedtn^s of ihe Koyal Institution between the years 1878 and 

 1893 will be sufficient to remove the suggestion that the 

 apparatus I use has been copied from the Cracovie Bulletin of 

 1890. The work ol the late Prof. Wr oiilewski has been fully ac- 

 knowledged in England, and 1 am not aware of any injustice done 

 to Charles Olszewski on account o( the alleged omission of his 

 subsequent investigations from public notice. 



James Dewar. 



The Term " Acquired Characters." 



I am afraid that as Sir Edward Vxy has endeavoured to show 

 that the explanation, given by -Mr. Gallon and accepted by me, 

 of the term " acquired characieis " is an absur.iity when applied 

 to the consideration of the question as lo whether those 

 characters can be Iransuiilterl by generation, I must proceed 

 to convict Sir Edward of a loose and unwarranied use of 

 language whilst availing himself of the plausible form of strict 

 logical statements. I am a liiile disappointed with the value 

 01 the results hitherto accruing from the interveniioa of high 

 judicial authority in a scicniific iliscu sion. 



Sir Edward Fry asked for a tiefinilion of the term "acquired 

 characters." From the observations which accompanied his 

 request, it was evident that he wished lor a siatcment of the 

 meaning attached to the lerrii when it is either asserted or denied 

 that the acquired characters 01 a parent may be inherited by its 

 offspring. 



Mr. Fiancis Gallon gave (and I accepted) as a brief explan- 

 ation of the term the following; "Characters are said lo be 

 acquired when they are regularly found in those individuals 

 only who have been subjected to certain special and abnormal 

 conditions." I look the trouble lo expand ihis explanation of 

 the lerm at considerable b ngth. VVncther Sir Edward F'ry has 

 understood what was said, or not, is uncertain. Whether he 

 has, or has not, he proceeds to stale that this definilion excludes 

 the possibility of the inheritance ol acquired characters, and 

 renders the inquiry as to whether characters acquired in one 

 generation may be hamlcd on lo the next by inheritance 

 impossible ! And therefore, according lo Sir Edward, ihe 

 definition is a worthless one lor the present purpose. Sir 

 Edwaid's argument runs: " Characicrs can only be found 

 regularly either in individuals exposed to conditions which 

 induce them, or in individuals which have inherited them. If 

 then a character appears only in those individuals exposed lo 

 certain conditions, 11 does not appear in individua's by inherit- 

 ance." That is perfectly eoirect ; but where Sir Edward F"ry is 

 entirely wrong, is in his illogical assumption that the words 

 "does not appear by inhcriiance" are equivalent 10 "is not 

 transmissible by inheritance"; in fact, that "docs not" means 

 "never will or can." Surely when Sir Edward lakes pains to 

 Use such a lechnica.1 term as " identical proposition," he should 

 remember ihe difference between "particular" and "uni- 

 versal." Mr. Gallon's definition enables the observer lo recog- 

 nise and select for inquiry an acquired character, viz. one which 

 IS found in those individuals only which have been sutijected lo 

 ceriain special conditions — that is to say, one which is at a given 

 lime and place so found. Nothing is said or implied as 10 

 future posibilities. It is the purpose of the inquirer to ascer- 

 tain whether this acquired characier can appear in a later 

 generation as a transmitted character. In ihe specimens ex- 

 amined it has not yet so appeared. As Sir Edward justly 

 observe.'^, since it appears only in those individuals exposed 10 

 certain conditions, it does not appear in individuals l>y inherit- 

 ance. ■ but that has nothing 10 do with the question as lo 

 whether it ivill or can appear in individuals by inheritance. 

 .\ccotdingly ihe conclusion reached by Sir Edward Fry, that Mr. 

 Gallon's definition of the term "acquired characier " i educes the 

 proposition that acquired characters are not transmissible lo an 

 identical one, is erroneous, and due lo a confusion by Sir 

 Edward of a statemenl of what is observed at a particular 

 moment with a statement of what must be for all time. 



It should be noted that Mr. Gallon's words do not furnish, or 

 profess to furnish, a definition by which any character may be 

 assigned to its class as either acquired or inheiited. It may 



NO. 1315, VOL. 51] 



