90U 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XIX. No. 493. 



came unstable; tlien there was an explosion, 

 and particles of matter were shot off at great 

 velocities. There was a series of such ex- 

 plosions, duefo atomic, not molecular, changes, 

 and resulting in the formation of a series of 

 transition elements. A mass of radium left to 

 itself must therefore throw itself away; prob- 

 ably in about 2,000 years its radio-activity 

 would fall to half value, and after 60,000 years 

 it would cease to exist. It was therefore to be 

 supposed, since radium was produced from 

 minerals more than 50,000 years old, that it 

 was being itself produced from something else, 

 and was itself a transition element. A year 

 ago to find evidence for this point of view 

 did not seem a very promising task, but since 

 then a great deal had been done. In the self- 

 destruction of radium two things must be 

 produced that were not radio-active — the 

 ct-ray and the final product. Now helium 

 was always found associated with radium- 

 minerals, and the suggestion that that gas 

 was one of the products had been confirmed 

 by Sir William Ramsay, who had shown 

 that the emanation was able to produce 

 helium from itself. Here there was appar- 

 ently a definite case of transmutation, though 

 not precisely of the kind sought after by 

 the alchemists, but there was no evidence as 

 yet that matter in general, apart from the 

 radio-active bodies, was undergoing changes 

 of this nature. Eadium was distributed very 

 widely over the earth; in fact, was present 

 eveiywhere, though in exceedingly minute 

 quantities. The question was thus suggested 

 — How much heat were these minute quan- 

 tities of radium able to provide, and could 

 they account for the gradual increase of tem- 

 perature found as we went deeppr into the 

 earth ? The lecturer himself believed that the 

 amount of radium present, uniformly distrib- 

 uted, would be sufiicient to account for all the 

 heat lost from the earth and would exijlain 

 the temperature-gradient as measured to-day. 

 In that case the date, as calculated by Lord 

 Kelvin, when this globe would have so far 

 cooled as to be uninhabitable might possibly be 

 postponed for a few million years, and an end 



put to the troubles of the biologists and geo- 

 logist about a little extra time in the past. 



SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 



The International Association of Academies 

 met at London at the end of May as the guest 

 of the Royal Society and the British Acad- 

 emy. The National Academy was represented 

 only by its British foreign members. No 

 information concerning the scientific work of 

 the association appears to have been made 

 public. 



At a recent meeting of the Board of Man- 

 agers of the New York Botanical Garden, Dr. 

 D. T. MacDougal was advanced from the 

 post of director of the laboratories to that of 

 assistant director of the institution. Dr. W. 

 A. Murrill was appointed assistant curator in 

 charge of the fungi to take the place of Pro- 

 fessor F. S. Earle, who recently resigned to 

 take the position of director of the Estacion 

 Agronomica of Cuba. 



De. E. L. Greene, head of the Department 

 of Botany of the Catholic University of 

 America, has resigned to accept a position in 

 the Smithsonian Institution. 



SiE William Ramsay was elected an honor- 

 ary member of the Bunsen Gesellsehaft, at 

 the recent meeting in Bonn. 



Sir William Huggins has been elected an 

 honorary member of the Royal Philosophical 

 Society of Glasgow. 



M. BiGOUEDAN has been elected a member of 

 the Paris Academy of Sciences in the section 

 for astronomy. 



Dr. E. Strasburger, professor of botany at 

 Bonn, has been elected a foreign member of 

 the Academy of Sciences at Christiania. 



The New York Evening Post states that 

 Professor Henry R. Mussey, of the University 

 of Pennsylvania, has been engaged by the Car- 

 negie Institution to make a special study of 

 the iron industry in the United States. 



Dr. H. Austin Aikins, professor of phi- 

 losophy in Western Reserve University, has 

 sailed for Europe on leave of absence for the 

 coming year. 



Mr. and Mrs. T. D. A. Cockeeell will spend 

 the summer in England; upon their return to 



