September 12, 1902.] 



SCIENCE. 



423 



a comparatively brief period, to reach the 

 same end. Nature causes to conspire all 

 the energies and all the forces with all the 

 materials of creation in the production of 

 her purposes with most perfect efficiency. 

 Man should be able, studying her ways, to 

 do the same. Nature makes all the uni- 

 verses obey her single law. Man should 

 be able to not only detect, define and re- 

 duce to rule and measure that universal 

 law, but he should be able to compel the 

 universal law to his service and to produce 

 as complete and consistent a world of his 

 own — so far as it goes, at least — as is ex- 

 emplified in the natural world about him. 

 Directing every energy precisely to the ac- 

 complishment of its prescribed purpose, ap- 

 plying every substance in its right place 

 and in the right manner in his construc- 

 tions, and bending every law to his aid in 

 the building of a world, he may profit in 

 maximum degree by every force, energy 

 and substance, by all material and all 

 spiritual laws and phenomena, by all op- 

 portunities of advancing himself to loftier 

 and loftier planes, perfecting himself and 

 perfecting life by continuous gain. 



The solidification of hydrogen by Pro- 

 . fessor Dewar, April 6, 1900, before the 

 Royal Institution, brought us, at the begin- 

 ning of the twentieth century, to the con- 

 clusion of a series of brilliant researches 

 which had for their outcome evidence that 

 all known forms of elementary matter are 

 capable of assuming either of the three 

 principal states, gaseous, liquid or solid, 

 to this degree reducing all matter to com- 

 mon rules and an all-comprehending law. 

 It now only remains to ascertain whether, 

 as De Volson Wood assumed, the lumin- 

 iferous ether, perhaps 'corpuscular,' may 

 be classed with the more ponderable forms 

 of matter. This seems possible, even prob- 

 able. This series of investigations of the 

 effect of low temperature upon the elements 

 completes that line of study, and it will 



presumably, ere long, be seen that this, like 

 every other great victory over nature in 

 the domain of pure science, will have its 

 ultimate and practical value as well in the 

 opening of the way to other, and perhaps 

 no less splendid, researches, as in the in- 

 troduction of new methods of application 

 of the forces of nature to the use of man. 



The recent and richly fruitful discovery 

 of the so-called 'radio-activity' of certain 

 forms of matter brings forward new facts 

 of quite another class and provokes the in- 

 vestigator into new fields of research. This 

 mobility of energy, or matter, whichever 

 it may prove, taken together with the 

 Roberts-Austen proof of the mobility of 

 solids and their interflow, even the densest 

 of them all, opens the way to the applica- 

 tion of a new form of theory of glacier- 

 like flow in the field of metallurgy, and pos- 

 sibly with even more widely reaching em- 

 ployment. Perhaps it may align itself 

 with the current theory of electric ioniza- 

 tion. 



A wonderfully simple experiment ^vill 

 sometimes result in a no less wonderfully 

 important deduction. When Roberts- Aus- 

 ten placed lead and gold in contact, fitting 

 their adjacent surfaces nicely to insure per- 

 fect contact, and later foimd that mole- 

 cules of gold had started off on a journey, 

 independently, into the lead, some of them 

 reaching a distance from their original 

 positions of two inches in as many years, 

 that simple test was sufficient to prove the 

 propositions that alloys may be formed 

 without heat or fusion, that glacial flow is 

 not characteristic of the glacier alone, that 

 osmose in solids may occur as in liquids 

 and in gases, only requiring a longer time 

 for its accomplishment, and that new in- 

 dustries may perhaps be organized on this 

 simple basis of fact. The conclusion, enor- 

 mous in its scientific importance, unimag- 

 inable in its extent of deduction, may be 

 drawn from this one experiment, accord- 



