542 ANNUAL, REPORT SMITHSOlSriAlSr INSTITUTION, 1919. 
The experiments of Eamsay and Cameron had been carried out on 
aqueous solutions of metallic salts. In the case of copper, the gases 
derived from the liquid after the elimination of the oxygen and 
hydrogen coming from the decomposition of the water, gave the 
spectrum of argon, without any line of helium. On the other hand, 
in treating distilled water with the emanation, neon was obtained, 
with a trace of helium, but no argon. These results also were con- 
tested. 
Ramsay, being asked one day by Richard Moore if he would try 
the experiments again, made a typical response : " No," he said, " I 
do not believe it worth while. I can only find again lithium and neon* 
and for me to obtain the same results again would not be a confirma- 
tion. I will leave to others the task of repeating the researches." 
The extreme interest of the subject led him to expect that new 
studies would be undertaken by skilled experimenters having at their 
disposal sufficient quantities of radium. 
Another problem, in some degree the reciprocal of the preceding, 
naturally j) resented itself: If the disintegration of heavy elements 
can lead to light elements, would it not be possible, by an inverse 
method, to condense light atoms into heavy atoms and thus realize 
in all its fullness the dream of the alchemists? Eamsay was not 
afraid to take up the subject. Collie and Patterson, having sub- 
mitted the glass of an ordinary empty tube to cathodic bombardment, 
had announced the production of helium, which had been formed hj 
the condensation of four atoms of hydrogen. Ramsay confirmed this 
result, and, going further, found that if the hydrogen is moist — that 
is, if it is accompanied by oxygen — there will be, moreover, forma- 
tion of neon, created by the addition of the atom of helium (4) to the 
atom of oxygen (16). It seemed to him, therefore, that under analo- 
gous conditions sulphur would lead to argon and selenium to crypton. 
Here, as well, the question should be taken up again. Its breadth, 
perhaps, surpasses that of all the others. Ramsay will have the honor 
of having opened up the new field, thanks to his incomparable talent 
in experimentation, as well as to his boldness and the independence of 
his scientific conceptions. 
These are, in fact, Ramsay's most pronounced characteristics. They 
are shown again, and in a most brilliant manner, in another work on 
the radium emanation which he carried out in 1910 with the assist- 
ance of WTiitlaw Gray. According to the theory of disintegration, 
the atom of emanation results from the loss of a helium atom by an 
atom of radium. If the atomic weight of radium is 226 and that of 
helium 4, the weight of an atom of emanation ought theoretically to 
be 222, Emanation, whose resistance to all combination had, more- 
over, been shown, came thus to occupy in the column of rare gases in 
