284 Address of Sir William Thompson. 
Tn contemplating them we feel as if led out from narrow waters 
of scholastic dogma to a refreshing excursion on the broad and 
deep ocean of truth, where we learn from the wonders we see 
that there are endlessly more and more glorious wonders still 
unseen. 
Stokes’s dynamical theory supplies the key to the philosophy 
of Frankland and Lockyer’s discovery. Any atom of gas, when 
dense that each atom is always in collision, that is to say, never 
free from influence of its nike ciara the spectrum will generally 
be continuous, and may present little or no appearance of bands, 
or even of maxima of brightness. In this condition the fluid 
can be no longer regarded as a gas, and we must judge of it 
relation to the vaporous or liquid states according to the critical 
conditions discovered by daidaceey 
: Spectroscopic Research in Astronomy. 
While these great investigations of properties of matter wel 
going on, naturalists were not idle with the newly-recogn2 
a of the spectroscope at their service. Chemists $00? 
ollowed the example of Bunsen in discovering new metals? 
terrestrial matter by the old blow-pipe and prism test of Fo% 
Jomed their forces. An astronomical observatory has to 
appended to it a stock of re-agents such as hitherto was only f 
be found in the chemical borstony: A devoted corps ° 
Volunteers of all nations, whose motto might well be Uogq" 
