SIR WILLIAM RAMSAY—MOUREU. 539 
per cent (thermal gas of Santenay, Céte-d’Or). (2) The quantitative 
relation crypton-argon has practically the same value in all natural 
mixtures, the atmospheric air included; the relation crypton-xenon, 
different from the preceding, is likewise constant, as is also the rela- 
tion xenon-argon, and as also appear the relations of these three 
gases with neon; it is possible to explain the constancy of the rela- 
tions by the chemical inertness and the analogous properties of these 
gases, which have thus been able, since the time of the original 
nebulae, to come through free and mixed together and without their 
quantitative relations being sensibly changed, all the cataclysms of 
astronomy and geology. (8) Helium, it is true, accompanies the 
other members of the group on all their voyages, but it escapes all 
proportionality; and it could not be otherwise, inasmuch as only 
helium is produced continually from radioactive substances, and 
these are unequally divided in the different strata. 
You see, gentlemen, what unexpected and weighty problems have 
been brought up by Ramsay’s discovery. What an exceptional des- 
tiny is that of these five gases, whose chemical inertness has assured 
to them, since the beginning of time, an eternal inviolability, and has 
thus made of them, like the demigods, immortal witnesses of all the 
physical phenomena of the earth and of the evolution of the spheres! 
For what practical applications are the new elements destined? 
Lighting tests in neon have proved very encouraging. Argon is used 
in incandescent lamps. And above all—Ramsay himself made the 
proposition—balloons have been inflated with helium, and by this 
means made noninflammable.’ 
What a prospect for aeronautics! How far we are from the 
famous solar spectrum line of Janssen, found again by Ramsay in 
the gas from cleveite!) Other uses will follow for helium as well as 
for the related gases; their career is still only at the beginning. New 
example, among a thousand, of the value of purely speculative re- 
search! All scientific discoveries, however exclusively contemplative 
their concern at first might appear, can not fail to lead sooner or later 
to practical applications. Would that the directors of our affairs 
could realize this fact which carries with it so much benefit and so 
much hope, and which also holds for them duties and responsibilities 
in the eyes of the country which has put its future in their hands. 
Could they but understand that science is power, that science is 
wealth! Let them encourage, with all their power, scientific re- 
search. Let them understand that learned men can not live differ- 
ently from other men, and that-they also have the right to a normal 
and honorable existence. Let them generously endow laboratories. 
Let them grant means for specially interesting studies which may be 
7 Cottrell, ‘‘ Fabrication industrielle de l’helium,’”’ Chimie et Industrie, 1919. 
