THE KINETIC THEORY OF GASES AND SOME OF ITS 

 CONSEQUENCES. ' 



By William Ramsay. 



"Flower in the crannied wall, 

 I pluck yon out of the crannies; 

 Hold yon hero, root and all, in my band, 

 Little flower — but if I could understand 

 What you are, root and all, and all in all, 

 I should know what God and man is." 



Though Science — Science with a capital S — is often contrasted with 

 Art — Art with a capital A; though the former is held to be dry and 

 unattractive, while the latter stirs the imagination and arouses 

 "thoughts that breathe and words that burn;" yet the follower of 

 science now and then is rewarded for his toil by an ordered sequence 

 which appeals to the imaginative side of bis nature, no less than the 

 rhythmic harmony of poetry, or the measured cadences of music;. 

 Indeed, it is not impossible for the poet to express better than, and as 

 truly as in, the pages of the Philosophical Transactions the highest 

 generalizations of science. In this Tennyson stands unrivalled. Take, 

 for example, the stanzas : 



"There rolls the deep where grew the tree, 

 O earth, what changes hast thou seen! 

 There where the long street roars, hath been 

 The stillness of the central sea. 



The hills are shadows, and they flow 

 From form to form, and nothing stands; 

 They melt like mist, the solid lands, 



Like clouds they shape themselves and go." 



It contains an epitome of the whole of geology. The science is mere 

 elaboration of the ideas contained in Tennyson's beautiful verses. 



The difficulty in gaining the appreciation of the "general public" is 

 in presenting the ideas in intelligible language. That the scientific and 

 the romantic are sometimes closely intermingled is indisputable; but 

 the romance is one which appeals to few. In the following pages an 



1 Reprinted from The Contemporary Review, November, 1898, by permission of the 

 Leonard Scott Publication Company. 



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