SECTION 26 DEDUCTION. 375 



with great exactness that this velocity [of light] is the same 

 for all colours, because if this were not the case, the minimum 

 of emission would not be observed simultaneously for different 

 colours during the eclipse of a fixed star by its dark neighbour." 

 (Relativity, 1920, p. 17.) Sir William Ramsay reasoned: "If 

 radium is disappearing, it must be continually in process of 

 formation, else there would be none on the surface of the 

 earth. ... As radium is always associated with uranium, it 

 appears not unreasonable to suppose that uranium, too, which 

 is a radio-active element, is slowly changing into radium." 

 (Essays Biographical and Chemical, p. 174.) Thorpe concluded: 

 "Experiments made by the method of Kundt and Warburg 

 i.e., by determining the ratio of the specific heats at constant 

 pressure and constant volume by the velocity of sound in the 

 gas prove that argon, like mercury gas, is monatomic. This 

 of itself indicates that argon is an element, since a monatomic 

 compound is a contradiction in terms." (Op. cit, vol. 2, p. 3^) 

 Professor Arrhenius argued: "If we calculate how much salt 

 there is in the sea, and how much salt the rivers can supply 

 to it in the course of the year, we arrive at the result that the 

 quantity of salt now stored in the ocean might have been 

 supplied in about a hundred million years." (Worlds in the 

 Making, 1908, p. 42.) Similarly Lord Kelvin disturbed the peace 

 of geologists and evolutionists by inferring from the rate at 

 which the earth's heat radiates into space that the age of the 

 solid earth is only about twenty million years, a deduction 

 which subsequently had to be drastically modified owing to 

 the discovery of radio-activity. Lord Lister cogitated thus : "If 

 putrefaction is always due to bacterial development, this must 

 apply as well to living as to dead tissues; hence the putre- 

 factive changes which oqcur in wounds and after operations 

 in the human subject, from which blood-poisoning so often 

 follows, might be absolutely prevented if the injured surface 

 could be kept free from access of the germ of decay." (H. S. 

 Williams, The Story of the Nineteenth Century, 1900.) Sir Ray 

 Lankester expresses himself as follows : "If, as seems probable, 

 the presence of helium indicates the previous presence of radium, 

 we have the evidence of enormous quantities of radium in the 

 sun, for we know helium is there in vast quantity. Not only 

 that, but inasmuch as helium has been discovered in most hot 

 springs and in various radio-active minerals in the earth, it 

 may be legitimately argued that no inconsiderable quantity of 

 radium is present in the earth." (The Kingdom of Man, p. 46.) 

 Lord Avebury declares: "If folded mountains are due to a 

 diminution of the diameter of the earth, every great circle 

 must have participated equally in the contraction." (The Scenery 

 of Switzerland, 1913, pp. 481-482.) E. W. McBride remarks : 

 "Since oxygen can only be taken into the living substance 

 and the poisonous excreta got rid of by the process of diffusion, 



