for the year 1880. xix 



collision between a comet and the sun is now made the 

 " bogie," and depicted in verbal rouge and ochre. Some of 

 the very painters of such catastrophes, if I am not mistaken, 

 once accounted in part for the maintenance of solar heat 

 from age to age by the falling in of comets upon the sun ; 

 yet after all the comets that have disappeared within the 

 fires of the solar furnace, the great one of 1843, according to 

 these alarmists, is par excellence the one reserved for 

 mischief. 



The researches of Pictet and those of M. Cailletet, on the 

 liquefaction and solidification of the more stubborn gaseous 

 elements, and "the results obtained by these physicists, have 

 done much to stimulate inquiry and thought in this depart- 

 ment ; thus Ramsay's researches have shown that gases 

 under pressure have a direct solvent action on solids, and 

 that the bodies they dissolve when returning once more to 

 the solid condition do so by assuming the crystalline form. 

 The remarkable outcome of these investigations is the 

 artificial production of the diamond, the nature of which is 

 vouched for by the very high authority of Professor 

 Maskelyne, and although we are not yet fully informed of 

 the details of the physics and chemistry of the method, 

 there appears to be reason to hope that the hitherto 

 mysterious secret of the formation of the diamond in nature 

 is on the eve of solution, however remote the commercial 

 manufacture of the gem may yet remain. It may be worth 

 while to add that the artificial manufacture of the diamond 

 of moderate size, even in a crude form, quite unfit for the 

 purposes of jewellery, could it be economically accomplished, 

 would bring about enormous changes in the mechanical arts, 

 for the artificial diamond would at once take a front posi- 

 tion as the material of turning tools and drills, and generally 

 as a grinding and polishing agent. 



New chemical elements are no longer sought out in the 

 dark by painful, tedious, and often perplexing analytical 

 research. Spectroscopic analysis greatly facilitates inquiries 



