October 24, 1912] 



NATURE 



would have made an interesting- extension of our l<no\v- 

 ledtje ; but, when critically examined, the kind of 

 radiation turned out to be for the most part not 

 Rontgen rays, but corpuscular, and to have nothing' to 

 do with fluorescence. 



Bi-cquerel set himself carefully to examine the kind 

 of penetrating radiation which fluorescent substances 

 exposed to light might be found to emit. Though not 

 finding that for which he sought, he made a discovery 

 of far greater importance. 



After giving an account of the recent discoveries 

 in radio-activity, the lecturer dwelt on the present 

 trend of scientific thought ; of the tendency to return 

 to discarded hypotheses such as spontaneous genera- 

 tion and the corpuscular theory of light. Our attitude 

 amongst so many conflicting hypotheses should be to 

 admit'that any law applicable to concrete objects and 

 established by induction on a basis of experience must 

 be of the nature of a postulate ; that we should hold 

 some of the postulates as so well-established that 

 arguments necessitating their overhauling should, 

 i/iio ^aclo, to that extent be discredited, and should 

 not receive our encouragement unless supported by 

 new facts. Our endeavours should be to harmonise 

 new facts with the firmly established laws of 

 phvsics until compelled to look for some higher 

 generalisation. 



Reference was then made to some of the well- 

 established laws, and to the attempts to construct 

 living matter from artificially combined materials. 

 Life demands energy for its manifestations, and radio- 

 activity may be suggested as a possible source of such 

 energy. It is known that atoms give off energy as 

 thev disintegrate ; that organic compounds likewise 

 disintegrate and evolve energy, finally becoming in- 

 organic. A decaying heap of refuse represents a close 

 chemical analogy to the physical activity of uranium — 

 one is an affair of atoms, the other of molecules. This 

 stock of energy running to waste seems eligible for 

 guidance. Life has to control this spontaneous dis~ 

 integration of protoplasmic cells, to regulate the 

 activitv of the ganglia in the brain, for instance, or 

 to suspend the disintegration of organic material until 

 some appointed time, and then to direct it along some 

 determined channel. We have yet to discover how life 

 achieves this control. Those who say that life cannot 

 guide material processes unless it is itself a form of 

 energy, and those holding that life cannot act at all 

 unless energy is at its disposal, forget the spontaneous 

 activity of complex organised molecules and the 

 atomic disintegration manifested by radio-activity. 



There is a great difference between matter potentially 

 living and actually alive. In the physical universe our 

 power is limited to the movement of matter ; after 

 that, all that happens is due to the properties of matter 

 and its ethereal environment. If potentially living 

 matter is ever artificially made by placing things in 

 juxtaposition and bringing physical resources to bear 

 uijnn the assemblage, then it may become alive. If 

 this last step be taken, it will be because something 

 beyond matter, something outside the region of physics 

 and chemistry, has stepped in and utilised the material 

 aggregate provided. Only in this sense did the lec- 

 turer consider that the artificial incarnation of life 

 would be possible. Some day life may appear under 

 observation, but it will not be manufactured, any more 

 than radium or radio-activity has been manufactured. 



Sir Oliver Lodge spoke of the tendency of present- 

 dav science to materialise the invisible, quoting, 

 aniong other examples of this, the fact that plague, 

 which in olden times was attributed to such mysterious 

 causes as a conjunction of the planets, the iniquities 

 of the Tews, &c., is now known to be due to a minute 

 vegetable parasite living on the fleas of rats. 



NO. 2243, VOL. go] 



The scientific life and work of Antoine Henri 

 Becquerel were then dealt with, and an account given 

 of his chief discoveries. A vote of thanks to Sir 

 Oliver Lodge, proposed bv Sir William Crookes, 

 O.M., F.R.S., seconded' by Prof. Henrv E. 

 Armstrong, F.R.S., and supported by the president, 

 was briefly acknowledged by the lecturer. 



THE RELATIONS BETWEEN VARIOUS 

 SOLAR PHENOMENA. 



T^WO papers recently published in the Comptes 



-'■ rendus (No. lo, September 2, and No. 12, Sep- 

 tember 16), by Prof. Ricc6 and M. Deslandres respec- 

 tively, contain several very important statements, con- 

 cerning the interrelations of such solar phenomena 

 as filaments, alignements, prominences, spots, &c., 

 which no student of solar physics can afford to neglect, 

 and which we briefly summarise below. 



Prof. Ricco, having studied his valuable records of 

 limb prominences and also those published bv Wolfer, 

 finds that the prominences frequently appear in the 

 same position on the sun's limb for several consecu- 

 tive days, and so must form files of prominence activity 

 across the disc, strongly resembling M. Deslandres's 

 filaments and alignments ; he also finds limb promin- 

 ences recorded at the time and in the positions indi- 

 cated by M. Deslandres's filaments and alignments. 

 He concludes that there is an indisputable connection 

 between the two sets of phenomena. With sun-spots, 

 however, he finds no connection with the filaments 

 and alignments. But in his paper M. Des- 

 landres considerably modifies this latter conclusion of 

 Prof. Ricc6's, and states that there is a general con- 

 nection, the several phenomena obviously belonging 

 to one system and reacting on each other. 



M. Deslandres, in order to make the investigation 

 more precise, gives further important results concern- 

 ing the filaments and alignments shown on his won- 

 derful series of photographs. He agrees that a 

 prominence on the limb generally means a filament 

 or alignment joining the limb at that point. The 

 relation between the two sets of phenomena is con- 

 firmed. Further, he differentiates more clearly be- 

 tween filaments and alignments, the former being a 

 special case of the latter, which cover much greater 

 lengths. Alignments vary in intensity from feebly 

 bright to very dark, and then merge into filaments 

 which are exceptionally black and well defined. The 

 alignments are frequently bordered, diffusely, with 

 parallel bright lines, whereas the filaments are clearly- 

 cut lines. Filaments are found on both the 

 "hydrogen" and the "calcium" photographs, most 

 strongly marked on the former, whereas alignments 

 are, in general, onlv found on the "calcium" photo- 

 graphs. The brightest prominences occur at the ends 

 of these bright companions of the alignments, and 

 are, therefore, as Prof. Ricc6 also points out, not 

 symmetricallv placed with regard to the central dark 

 alignment. Prof. Ricc6 suggests that this asymmetry 

 is due to the fact that while the prominences are 

 emission, the alignments are absorption, phenomena, 

 and thus the two things probably represent activity 

 in different layers of the solar atmosphere. 



M. Deslandres suggests that the restriction of align- 

 ments to the "calcium" photographs, whereas the 

 filaments are better shown on the " hydrogen " plates, 

 may be due to the fact that the filaments probably 

 exist at higher levels, not so readily reached by the 

 calcium vapours. He also suggests that those eruptive 

 prominences not connected with spots are intimately 

 connected with filaments, and in his radial-velocity 



