December 8, 1898J 



NA TURE 



m 



process which he devised did indeed, as we are informed, save 

 ihe lives of thousands of cattle. In course of time, however, it 

 turned out that the immunity conferred by it was not sufficiently 

 permanent, while it was attended with some other serious 

 practical inconveniences. Hence it became necessary to seek 

 for some more perfect method. This has been done by a 

 Cierman investigator, Dr. KoUe, who went out to continue 

 Koch's work, acting in co-operation with one whom I am 

 patriotic enough to be pleased to speak of as an j;nglishman, 

 Dr. George Turner, the Government Health Officer of Cape 

 Colony. Koch had early ascertained that the serum of an 

 animal which had recovered from rinderpest, if injected under 

 the skin of a healthy animal, conferred upon it complete though 

 very transient immunity. This was the basis of the work of 

 Kolle and Turner, who, after a long series of laborious investi- 

 gations, have, it appears, at length attained their object by 

 simultaneously injecting, at two distant parts of the animal's 

 body, a little of the antitoxic serum, and a dose of the blood of 

 a diseased animal, which, without the serum, would prove cer- 

 tainly fatal. The result is that the beast becomes affected with 

 the disease in a form so greatly modified that it causes as a rule, 

 only slight symptoms, and sometimes none at all ; and, though 

 it occasionally proves falal, it does so in considerably less than 

 I per cent, of the cattle .'-ubjected to it, contrasting most 

 strikingly with ordinary rinderpest, which kills from So to 90 

 per cent, of those affected. And, just as in the case of vaccin- 

 ation, this modified and mild form of the disease confers protec- 

 tion against it in its most virulent condition ; so that even the 

 beasts in which the treatment had produced no symptoms at all 

 remained absolutely unaffected when tested subsequently with a 

 dose of infective material sufficient to kill 10,000 full-grown oxen. 

 This immunity is also of a very lasiing character ; and, indeed, 

 so far as experience has yet gone, it may be as permanent as 

 that caused by an ordinary attack. 



This process was very extensively employed as a prophylactic 

 in the herds of South Africa, during the raging of the epidemic, 

 and with most remarkable success. According to an estimate 

 based on the Cape Government statistics, the effect of the pre- 

 ventive inoculations carried out during the last two years, 

 including those by Koch's method, has been to cause the saving 

 of the lives of upwards of 700,000 head of cattle. It is believed 

 that, had it not been for these prophylactic labours, the number 

 of cattle remaining in the country, instead of being, as now, 

 upwards of a million, would have been little more than 

 300,000. And it is to be remembered that these are the gross 

 results, including not only those of the present method, but also 

 those of the comparatively imperfect processes that led up to it. 



Assuming, as I believe we may, that the report from which 

 these statements are drawn is entirely worthy of confidence, we 

 have here a striking example of beneficent application of science. 



Among the many important matters that have come before us 

 during the past year, some in the domain of chemistry seem to 

 stand out as especially striking. One of these is the liquefacton 

 of hydrogen by Prof. Dewar. In previous attempts by 

 Olszewski and himself, drops of clear liquid had been seen 

 which it was supposed were composed of that element ; but 

 no one could be quite sure that these were not merely the 

 result of the condensation of other gases which it is extremely 

 difficult to get rid of completely. None could be certain that 1 

 hydrogen, if liquefied, would not present, like mercury, the 

 appearance of a metal. Dewar, however, after long continued 

 perseverin,; efl'ort, succeeded in producing a liquid in bulk, 

 with well defined meniscus, which, in one of his wonderfully 

 effective vacuum-coated vessels, could be manipulated experi- 

 mentally, as liquid air had been, allowing at once the 

 determination of some of its physical constants, and liquefjing 

 the previously refractory helium, implying a lower tempar- 

 ature than had ever before been attained by man. This 

 achievement is not only of supreme interest in itself but opens 

 up an entirely new field for investigations into the properties 

 of matter. 



Liquefied gases have been the means by which I'rof. Ramsay 

 has been able to obtain his recent very remarkable results. As 

 chairman of the Chemical Section of the British Association at 

 Toronto he had boldly taken as the subject of his opening address 

 an unknown element, of the existence of which he felt confident 

 from theoretical considerations. He believed that there must 

 exist such a body with an atomic weight intermediate between 

 those of argon and helium. He sought for this element, hoping 

 to find it locked up, like helium, in some mineral, and in other 



NO. 1519, VOL. 59] 



ways tried to discover it. But in a paper presented to the 

 Society early in this year, he was obliged to confess that all his 

 efforts had been fruitless. At the same time in that paper he 

 again expounded his reasons for believing in the existence of the 

 unknown body. He has .since adopted a new line of investi- 

 gation. Having at his disposal a large supply of liquid air, he 

 tried with it the method of fractional distillation ; and after 

 allowing the main bulk to evaporate, proceeded to volatilise and 

 test the residue. In this he tlid indeed find what appears to be 

 a new elementary body, to which he gave the name of Krypton. 

 But so far from complying with his requirements, this gas was 

 found to be much denser than argon ; indeed it is thought prob- 

 able by Ramsay that it has twice its density, and therefore, 

 being, like argon, monatomic, twice its atomic weight. Ramsay, 

 however, had another resource at his command. Aided by Mr. 

 Travers, who has throughout this inquiry most ably seconded 

 him, he had, by long continued labour, procured a large store of 

 argon. This he liquefied by subjecting it to the cold of boiling 

 liquid air ; and surmising that any element lighter than argon 

 would be present in the superjacent vapour, he collected this 

 and subjected it to analysis. And now he found what he had so 

 long sought for, a new elementary gas with atomic weight inter- 

 mediate between those of argon and helium. To this he gave 

 the name of Neon. 



But this was not all. As the argon liquefied at the low tem- 

 perature caused by boiling liquid air, a white solid was seen to 

 be deposited in it, and this remained after all the liquid had 

 evaporated. This solid, on being volatilised and tested, was 

 found to be, as is believed, another new element. This, though 

 very unlike argon in physical characters, possesses a nearly, if 

 not absolutely identical atomic weight ; just as some metals with 

 very .similar atomic weights difl'er in their qualities. This 

 element has therefore received the appellation Metargon. 



Such is a most rough sketch of two samples of the work of 

 the Society during the past year. 



The President then proceeded to award the medals. 



The Copley Medal is awarded to Sir William Huggins for his 

 great achievements in the application of spectrum analysis to 

 the heavenly bodies. 



His first results in this direction were obtained early in 1864. 

 At the commencement of his labours in his observatory at Tulse 

 Hill, he worked in conjunction with the late Prof. Miller. By 

 visual observation a multitude of lines in the spectra of Betelgeux 

 and Aldebaran were carefully measured, mapped, and compared 

 with those of terrestrial elements. This is notable as being the 

 first application of thoroughly precise methods to the study of 

 the spectra of stars, and as showing the presence of terrestrial 

 elements in them. 



On August 29, 1S64, Huggins discovered the bright line 

 spectrum characteristic of certain nebulae. This rnust always 

 be regarded as one of his chief titles to fame. It was an epoch- 

 making discovery, for it established in an unquestionable manner 

 that some of these objects were veritably gaseous. The interest 

 of this work was greatly increased by the fact that, by com- 

 parison with the spectrum of terrestrial hydrogen, Huggins 

 showed that one of the nebular lines belonged to that substance. 



In 1S68, Huggins applied the principle of Doppler to the 

 measurement of stellar movements in the line of sight. He 

 thus originated a department of spectroscopy which has been 

 considered to be perhaps Ihe most instructive application of spec- 

 trum analysis to astronomy. Notable results were obtained by 

 Huggins himself in the application of this method, and it has 

 led to many remarkable developments in the hands of other 

 astronomers. By following the course which Huggins originated, 

 wholly new classes of double stars have been revealed, the move- 

 ments of Algol have been explained, and the mathematical 

 theory of Saturn's ring has been visually confirmed. 



The appearance of Winnecke's comet, in the year 1868, gave 

 Huggins the opportunity of studying, for the first time, the 

 spectrum of one of those bodies. He found bright lines in the 

 spectrum of the comet which agreed with those of olefiant gas. 

 Thus he established the fact that carbon was a constituent of 

 comets. 



The spectrum of Vega had been photographed by H. Draper, 

 in 1872. In 1876, Huggins obtained a photograph of the spec- 

 trum of the same star. He then discovered the remarkable 

 series of hydrogen lines characlcristic of the spectra of the class 

 of so-called while stars which includes Sirius as well as Vega. 

 The very beautiful system of hydrogen lines in this ultra-violet 



