A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



technical reader to suppose that these substances, 

 once isolated, have been carefully stored away and 

 jealously guarded, each in its imprisoning test-tubes. 

 Jealously guarded they have been, to be sure, but there 

 has not been, by any means, the solitary confinement 

 that the words might seem to imply. On the contrary, 

 each little whiff of gas has been subjected to a variety 

 of experiments made to pass through torturing-tubes 

 under varying conditions of temperature, and brought 

 purposely in contact with various other substances, 

 that its physical and chemical properties might be 

 tested. But in each case the experiment ended with 

 the return of the substance, as pure as before, to its 

 proper tube. The precise results of all these experi- 

 ments have been communicated to the Royal Society 

 by Professor Ramsay. Most of these results are of a 

 technical character, hardly appealing to the average 

 reader. There is one very salient point, however, in 

 regard to which all the new substances, including 

 argon and helium, agree; and it is that each of them 

 seems to be, so far as present experiments go, absolutely 

 devoid of that fundamental chemical property, the 

 power to combine with other elements. All of them 

 are believed to be monatomic that is to say, each of 

 their molecules is composed of a single atom. This, 

 however, is not an absolutely novel feature as com- 

 pared with other terrestrial elements, for the same 

 thing is true, for example, of such a familiar substance 

 as mercury. But the incapacity to enter into chemical 

 combinations seems very paradoxical; indeed it is al- 

 most like saying that these are chemical elements which 

 lack the most fundamental of chemical properties. 



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