560 REPORT- 1886. 



when once formed, could never be decomposed — iu fact, that the resolution of 

 these hodies iuto their component elements could never occur again. You would 

 then have something of our present system of things. . . . 



' Now this is not purely an imagination, for when we look upon the surface of 

 our globe we have actual evidence of similar changes in Nature. . . . When we 

 look at some of the facts which have been revealed to us by the extraordinary 

 analyses which have been made of the matter of distant worlds and nebulae, by 

 means of the spectroscope, it does not seem incredible to me that there may even be 

 evidence, some day, of the independent existence of such things as x and v.' 



In his Bui-nett Lectures ' On Light as a Means of Investigation,' Professor 

 Stokes, speaking of a line in the spectrum of the nebulae, says : — * It may possibly 

 indicate some form of matter more elementary than any we know on earth. There 

 seems no a priori improbability in such a supposition so great as to lead us at once 

 to reject it. Chemists have long speculated on the so-called elements, or many of 

 them, being merely verj' stable compounds of elements of a higher order, or even 

 perhaps of a single kind of matter.' 



In 1868 Graham wrote of Sir W. Thomson's vortex-ring theory, as enlivening 

 ' matter into an individual existence and constituting it a distinct substance or 

 element.' 



From these passages, which might easily be multiplied, it plainly appears that 

 the notion — not necessarily of the decomposability, but at any rate of the com- 

 plexity of our supposed elements — is, so to speak, in the air of science, waiting to 

 take a further and more definite development. It is important to keep before 

 men's minds the idea of the genesLs of the elements ; this gives some form to our 

 conceptions, and accustoms the mind to look for some physical production of 

 atoms. It is still more important, too, to keep in view the great probability that 

 there exist in Nature laboratories where atoms are formed and laboratories where 

 atoms cease to be. We are on the track and are not daunted, and fain would we 

 enter the mysterious region which ignorance tickets ' Unknown.' It is for us 

 to strive to unravel the secret composition even of the so-called elements — to 

 undauntedly persevere — and 'still bear up right onward.' 



If we adopt the easy-going assumption that the elements, whether self-existent 

 or created, are absolutely and primordially distinct ; that they existed as we now 

 find them prior to the origin of stars and their attendant planets, constituting, in 

 fact, the primal ' tire-mist,' we are little, if any, the wiser. We look at their 

 number and at their distinctive properties, and we ask, Are all these points acci- 

 dental or determinate ? In other words, might there as well have been only 7, or 

 700, or 7,000 absolutely distinct elements as the 70 (in round numbers) which we 

 now commonly recognise ? The number of the elements does not, indeed, com- 

 mend itself to our reason from any « priori or extraneous considerations. Might 

 their properties have conceivably diflered from those which we actually observe ? 

 Are they formed by 'a 'fortuitous concatenation,' or do they constitute together a 

 definite whole, in which each has its proper part to play, and from which none 

 could be extruded without leaving a recognisable deficiency ? 



If their peculiarities were accidental it would scarcely be possible for the ele- 

 ments to display those mutual relations which we find brought into such prominent 

 light and order in the periodic classification of Newlands, Mendeleeff, and Meyer. 

 Has not the relation between the atomic weights of the three halogens, chlorine, 

 bromine, and iodine, and their serially varying properties, physical and chemical, 

 been worn nearly threadbare ? And the same with the calcium and the sulphur 

 groups ? Surely the probability of such relations existing among some 70 bodies 

 which had come into fortuitous existence would prove to be vanishingly small ! 



We ask whether these elements may not have been evolved from some few 

 antecedent forms of matter — or possibly from only one such — just as it is now held 

 that all the innumerable variations of plants and animals have'been developed from 

 fewer and earlier forms of organic life ? As Dr. Gladstone well puts it, they 

 * have been built up one from another, according to some general plan.' This 

 building up, or evolution, is above all things not fortuitous : the variation and 



