652 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIV. No. 880 



plained electrical activities could cause the 

 light of the nebulse. The helix prophesies the 

 discovery of only one new element of low 

 atomic weight, proto fluorine, and an intensi- 

 fied fluorine would naturally be a difficult ele- 

 ment to capture. 



On the completion of the first circle, a 

 double momentum swelled the curve to a full 

 octave, culminating in the unique element 

 carbon, the element of life, and in a second 

 octave culminating in silicon, the basis of the 

 rocks. In contrast to the corpuscular tem- 

 perature or vibration within the atom in the 

 elements of the nebulse, normal molecular vi- 

 bration and normal electrical conditions be- 

 came prevalent. 



On passing potassium the treble momentum 

 culminated in a double octave with the iron- 

 nickel-cobalt group of the hot stars, the 

 meteorites and the interior of the earth (see 

 top of Fig. 1). One may surmise that most 

 of the heavy elements beyond this group are 

 unimportant in the mass of the earth as they 

 are in the meteorites. A considerable molecu- 

 lar radiation may have been a condition 

 precedent for the addition of a group of cor- 

 puscles equivalent to three hydrogen atoms, 

 and the increasing complexity of the elements 

 is indicated by their high and varying valence. 

 Will three new elements be found to fill the 

 gaps below Mn or will the outer triads be 

 robbed for this purpose. The almost empty 

 semicircle between Yb and Ta is tantalizing, 

 but the helix would rule out the gathering of 

 the " elements of the rare earths " into a 

 group like the triads. 



The sun carries the evolution a step further 

 and it is conceivable that all the elements of 

 the lowest-fusing quadrant have evaporated 

 from it. Lead alone of the very heavy ele- 

 ments appears in the sun as a sort of calx or 

 caput mortuum, suggesting that evaporation 

 into helium has reached its limit there. It is 

 remarkable that at the farthest place from this 

 volatile quadrant, at the outermost curve of 

 the high-fusing semi-circle, the radium ele- 

 ments should be evaporating with explosive 

 heat and light-giving violence over aU the 

 surface of the earth: should exist in the outer 



layers of the earth only, and should be brought 

 up by the light and highly acid pegmatite, 

 whose quartz grains have been formed below 

 800°.* Becker's suggestion of the genesis of 

 pegmatite with uranium as a potentializer of 

 the energy that must escape in its formation 

 is most interesting." 



When the assemblages had become so com- 

 plex that devolution began to prevail over evo- 

 lution the size of the added group of cor- 

 puscles increased to four, and a short advance 

 only was made along the first quadruple-octave 

 ring. 



If ink is allowed to flow from a dropping 

 tube, the point of which is immersed in water 

 in a tall glass, the descending stream soon 

 forms vortex rings and, as these rings sink 

 and expand, they often become scalloped at 

 the edges and the scallops expand in lobes 

 which separate in distinct subordinate vortex 

 rings while the central part closes in as an 

 almost perfect ring again. Sometimes several 

 of these lobes will separate symmetrically at 

 the same time like the fluting on the border 

 of a rose leaf. This is a model of the radium 

 emanations and of the breaking up of the 

 complex atoms. Thus is the limit set to the 

 complexity of the atom and the length of the 

 helix. 



It has a mystical attractiveness that the 

 helix has a shape like the spiral nebula from 

 which all things have been thought to origi- 

 nate, and toward which they again tend, and 

 that the tetrahedral element carbon stands in 

 the center of this helix and by its shapes 

 (ranging from the tetrahedron which in- 

 cludes the smallest amount of matter in unit 

 surface almost to the sphere which contains 

 the largest amount of matter in unit surface) 

 typifies the infinite possibilities of life of 

 which it is the vehicle and embodies the tetra- 

 hedral form which the earth has repeatedly if 

 imperfectly assumed." B. K. Emerson 



* Day and Shepard, Am. Jour. So., Vol. XX., p. 

 276, 1906. 



°G. F. Becker, " Kadioaetivity and Cosmogony, " 

 Bull. Geo. Soc, Vol. 19, p. 143. 



= T. Arldt, "Die Entwicklung der Erde," p. 

 506, 1907. 



