February 13, 1913J 



NATURE 



rare and beautiful, together with the instinct of 

 the antiquarian, the bibliophile and the collector. 

 His generous and sympathetic nature endeared 

 him to all who were his fellow-workers, and more 

 than one man has to thank him for scientific 

 opportunity that would otherwise have been denied 

 him. 



Lord Crawford's health in his later years was 

 far from good. He once wrote : " It has been 

 my lot to live in close communication with two 

 inseparable hangers-on, the one rheumatism, the 

 other asthma. I found relief by going to sea, 

 provided it was towards the Sunny South. The 

 cold damp of a home winter I have not faced for 

 many years." During' these voyages he made 

 important collections of birds, fishes, insects and 

 plants (many of them previously unknown to 

 science), which were presented to the National 

 History Department of the British Museum, or, 

 in the case of live specimens, to the Zoological 

 Society. The story of his last cruise in his yacht, 

 the Valhalla, among the little-known islands of 

 the Pacific is told by Mr. M. J. Nicoll in his 

 "Three Voyages of a Naturalist." 



During the last four years of his life Lord 

 Crawford was almost a prisoner in his house, 

 Cavendish Square, London, where he occupied a 

 suite of rooms that was maintained at nearly 

 uniform temperature. But his mental activity was 

 unabated, and almost to the last he was closely 

 occupied in preparing a catalogue of a vast 

 number of documents he had gathered together 

 relating to the French Revolution — a collection 

 that includes more than 600 original letters of 

 Napoleon the First. 



Lord Crawford joined the Royal Astronomical 

 Society in 1871, and became its president in 1878 

 and 1879. In recognition of his services to 

 astronomy he was elected a fellow of the Royal 

 Society in 1878. He was a trustee of the British 

 Museum, a Knight of the Thistle, a Knight of 

 Grace of St. John of Jerusalem, a Commander of 

 the Lesrion of Honour of France and of the Rose 

 of Brazil. 



ORIGINS OF HELIUM AND NEON. 



AT the meeting of the Chemical Society on 

 Thursday last, February 6, two papers were 

 read which have attracted great public attention. 

 One was by Sir William Ramsay, on the presence 

 of helium in an X-ray tube, and the other, on the 

 presence of neon in hydrogen after the passage 

 of the electric discharge through hydrogen at 

 low pressure, was by Prof. Norman Collie and 

 Mr. H. Patterson. An excellent account of the 

 meeting appeared in The Morning Post of February 

 7, and upon it the subjoined revised report is 

 based. Elsewhere in the present issue will be 

 found a communication from Sir J. J. Thomson 

 describing recent experiments of a somewhat 

 similar character made by him, and his interpreta- 

 tion of them. 



In the absence of the president of the Chemical 

 Society, Prof. A. Smithells presided at the meeting of 

 the Chemical Society at Burlington House on February 

 NO. 2259, VOL. 90] 



6. Sir William Ramsay, in his paper on the presence of 

 helium in the gas from the interior of an X-ray tube, 

 reminded the fellows that some years ago he and 

 Mr. Cameron had obtained lithium from copper, 

 though people were mildly incredulous. He had also 

 published a statement to the effect that under the 

 influence of radium emanation silicon gave some 

 carbon dioxide, while with thorium a respectable 

 quantity of carbon dioxide was obtained, the inference 

 being that the element tended to break down to 

 carbon, which in the presence of oxygen became 

 carbon dioxide. When the time came for him to 

 have to return the radium that had been lent to him 

 he had looked about for some other subst-'nce with 

 which to continue his experiments. Radium gave 

 helium and niton, or radium emanation, and also heat 

 and a rays. Niton was extraordinarily energetic, more 

 so than any other known substance, so that a cubic 

 centimetre of it gave more than three and a half 

 million times the energy of a cubic centimetre of 

 explosive gas. During the decomposition of the 

 emanation a rays were given off and ^ rays with even 

 greater velocity. The question to determine was 

 whether it was possible to find signs of chemical 

 transformation through the (3 rays, a difficult one 

 when it was remembered that only 6 per cent, of the 

 energy of emanation appeared in the form of /3 rays. 

 He had made the attempt, however, with old X-raj 

 bulbs. In the first instance his method had been to 

 break the bulbs, and on analysing the gases con- 

 tained in the glass by means of the combustion tube, 

 he had found as the only gases helium, neon, and 

 argon. Last November, instead of breaking the 

 bulbs, he had heated them to three hundred degrees, 

 and collected the gases, finding the spectrum of 

 helium and also a small quantity of neon. As a result 

 of these experiments there was no question that the 

 bulbs contained helium. The problem was what was 

 the source of this helium. It might have been de- 

 rived from the electrons, or from contact with the 

 kathode or anti-kathode, or from the contact of the 

 kathodic rays with the glass. Last summer he had 

 informed the society that on treating water with 

 radium emanation, instead of getting helium, neon 

 was got, the equation suggesting itself that helium 

 {^l plus oxygen (i6) equals neon (20). Thus at Bath, 

 when the waters were charged with radium, great 

 quantities of both neon and helium were produced. 



Prof. N. J. Collie and Mr. H. Patterson read theii 

 paper on the presence of neon in hydrogen after the 

 passage of the electric discharge through hydrogen 

 at low pressures. Prof. Collie directed attention to 

 the fact that he and Mr. Patterson had done the early 

 portion of the work of their joint paper independently 

 and from different points of view, and that it was 

 onlv in the later stages of the work, when they had 

 learnt that they were getting the same results inde- 

 pendently, that they had collaborated. He described 

 his early experiments, which had been undertaken 

 on fluorspar with the hope of decomposing the fluorine 

 by means of the electric discharge. On testing some 

 fluorspar that Sir William Ramsay had received from 

 Iceland last summer he had found that helium was 

 given off. Further investigation showed that the spar 

 pave off carbon monoxide and other gases, and when 

 the nroblein had been investigated with one of Sir 

 William Ramsay's ingenious pieces of apparatus it had 

 been determined that on treating the spar neon was pro- 

 duced. Further investigation showed that the same 

 result was obtained by using artificial calcium fluoride, 

 and again by usine glass wool, and then again by 

 carrying out the dischargfe in the bare glass tube. 

 What was the origin of the neon? Had air leaked in 

 through the taps of the apparatus? Was it due to 

 impurities in the hydrogen placed in the tube to con- 



