Chemistry and Physics. 329 



SCIENTIFIC INTELLIGENCE. 



I. Chemistry and Physics. 



1. Radium and Helium. — Speaking at a dinner of the Society 

 of Chemical Industry at Bradford, England, last July, Sir 

 William Ramsay announced that he and Mr. Soddy, of Mon- 

 treal, who has been working in his laboratory, had found that 

 helium is a constituent of the gas emanating from radium. The 

 gas from radium was first passed through a tube cooled with 

 liquid air, in which the active part of the emanation was con- 

 densed and remained behind, while the gas which passed through, 

 when examined in a microscopic Pliicker tube, showed undoubtedly 

 the whole spectrum of helium. There is, in Ramsay's opinion, a 

 production of helium continuously from radium. 



A few days after the above announcement was made, a state- 

 ment appeared in the London Times that Sir W. and Lady 

 Htjggins, upon photographing the spectrum of the light emitted 

 by radium at ordinary temperature, had obtained eight definite 

 bright lines in the ultra violet, entirely different from the spark- 

 spectrum of radium, four and perhaps five of which lines agreed 

 with the lines of helium. — Chem.. JS'eics, Ixxxviii, 39. h. l. w. 



2. The Action of Salts of Radium upon Globulins. — W. B. 

 Hardy has given an account of some experiments carried out in 

 the laboratory of Sir William Crookes, and with his assistance. 



Two solutions of globulin from ox serum were used, one electro- 

 positive, made by adding acetic acid, the other electro-negative, 

 made by adding ammonia. 



They were exposed in shallow cells, one wall of which was 

 made of thin mica, to the radiations from 50 m.g. of pure radium 

 bromide, enclosed in a capsule covered with mica, so that two 

 sheets of mica were interposed between the radium and the solu- 

 tion. No action took place in one hour. The globulin was then 

 exposed as naked drops, separated by 3 mm. of air from the 

 radium salt, with suitable controls, shielded from the radium. 

 In the positive solution the opalescence rapidly diminished — that 

 is to say, solution became more complete. The negative solution 

 was turned to a jelly, at first transparent, rapidly becoming 

 opaque. The action was complete in about three minutes. 



Radium, like other radio-active bodies, gives off matter in three 

 states — (1) an emanation having the mobility of a heavy gas, (2) 

 positively charged particles of little penetrating power, and rela- 

 tively large size, (3) ultra-material negative particles, of a size 

 much smaller than atoms. A mica plate will screen off 1 and 2, 

 therefore the globulin solutions are unaffected by the ultra-mate- 

 rial negative particles. The rate of action and conditions of the 

 experiment make it unlikely that the emanation was the active 

 agent, though, owing to its nature, intense solvent or coagulating 

 power may safely be predicated of it. The action observed may 



