THE DISCOVERY OF NEW ELEMENTS. 245 



by B. Brauner' and Ludwig Staudeninaier,^ does not fit at all iuto the 

 periodic system; on the other hand the existence in this substance of 

 a foreign element, such as austriacum, suggested by B. Brauner, does 

 not appear to be established.^ As to the much agitated question of 

 whether and to what extent the atomic weight of cobalt differs from 

 that of nickel, I believe that T have answered it in a satisfactory man- 

 ner and*destroyed the hypothesis^ of Gerhard Kriiss and F. W. Schmid'^ 

 with regard to the existence in one of these substances of a third ele- 

 ment which had received the name of gnomium. 



The rapid review that we have just made of the discovery of new 

 elements during the last twenty-five years shows that new researches 

 iu this line have been pursued with great activity and have led to results 

 of considerable value. And yet the speculations to which these 

 researches have given rise may be considered as quite uncertain as 

 regards the question of the possibility^ of the ultimate decomposition of 

 those bodies that now appear to be simple; and j)er contra as regards 

 the progressive development of a primitive substance and the new for- 

 mation of the numerous elements that are now recognized. I will only 

 recall in this connection the hypothesis of Mr. Lockyer^ as to the dis- 

 sociation of the elements in the interior of the atmosphere of the 

 sun. Hypotheses of this sort Avill remain such as long as no one 

 has succeeded in decomposing a body hitherto regarded as undoubt- 

 edly simple, or iu transforming any element whatever into another. 

 And yet they should not be considered as entirely inadmissible; a day 

 may come when some unexpected event may open to science new ways 

 of investigation. Four hundred years ago ISTicholas Copernicus left, as 

 a young master of philosophy and of medicine, the old university of 

 Ulica St. Anny, at Cracow, to go to Bologna and to Eome for the pur- 

 pose of consecrating his talents as a mathematician to the study of 

 astronomical sciences. There, attacking the enigma of the firmament, 

 he finally attained the certainty that the eartli was not, as had been 

 hitherto believed, a central fixed world, but a sphere suspended freely 

 in space, a planet similar to the other planets, turning around the sun 

 and having a movement of rotation around its own axis under the action 

 of gravitation. It was, indeed, a true revolution in the theories that 

 had been hitherto held, this theory that fixed the sun in the firmament 

 in spite of its daily ascent and disappearance; an idea that, at the 

 present day, has become familiar to us. And further, we now know 

 that neither is the sun itself fixed, but that it is drawn with all its' 

 cortege of planets along a course without end, across space without 



' B. Brauuer, Sitzungsber. d. k. k. Akad. der Wissensch., Wieu, 1889. 

 ^Zeitscbr. fiir anorgan. Cbemie, 10. 

 ^Cl. Winkler, Zeitschr, fiir anorgan. Chemie, 8, 

 ^Cl. Winkler, Zeitscb. f. anorgan. Cbemie. 



■''Gerbard Kruss and F. W. Schmidt, Berichte d. deutscb. cbem. Gesellscb., 22, 

 and Zeitscb. f. anorg. Cbemie, 2. 

 ° N. Lockyer, Bericbte d. deutscb. cbem. Gesellscbaft, 6, 11 et 12. 



