AmAP°X  rsfo rm }  The  Chemical  Elements.  1 9  9 
matter.  One  hundred  grains  of  B.  serratifolia,  when  powdered  and 
boiled  with  water,  yielded  ten  fluidounces  of  thick  mucilage.  To 
separate  the  fragments  of  exhausted  leaves  the  thick  liquid  so  obtained 
was  filtered  through  a  plug  of  cotton  wool,  by  atmospheric  pressure, 
into  a  flask  exhausted  of  air.  A  bright  liquor  was  thus  obtained,  which 
under  the  microscope  showed  no  leaf  fragments. — Phar.  Jour,  and 
Trans.,   Feb.  15,  1879,  p.  673. 
THE  CHEMICAL  ELEMENTS. 
By  J.  Norman  Lockyer,  F.R  S. 
I  have  recently  announced  to  the  Royal  Society  that,  reasoning  from  the  phenom- 
ena presented  to  us  in  the  spectroscope  when  known  compounds  are  decomposed, 
I  have  obtained  evidence  that  the  so  called  elementary  bodies  are  in  reality  compound 
ones. 
Although  the  announcement  took  this  form,  the  interest  taken  in  science  nowa- 
days by  the  general  public  is  so  great  that  it  is  apt  to  travel  beyond  the  record  ;  and, 
as  able  editors  are  not  content  to  wait  for  what  the  experimentalist  himself  has  to 
say, they  are  often  at  the  mercy  of  those  who,  perhaps  more  from  misapprehension  than 
anything  else,  are  prepared  to  provide  columns  filled  with  statements  wide  of  the 
mark.  Nor  is  this  all.  Tf  there  be  a  practical  side  to  the  work,  some  "  application 
of  science"  is  brought  to  the  front,  and  the  worker's  own  view  of  the  labor  is  twisted 
out  of  all  truth.  . 
This  has  happened  in  my  case.  The  idea  of  simplifying  the  elements  is  connected 
with  the  philosopher's  stone.  The  use  of  the  philosopher's  stone  was  to  transmute 
metals  ;  therefore  I  have  been  supposed  to  be  "  transmuting  "  metals  ;  and  imagina- 
tions have  been  so  active  in  this  direction  that  I  am  not  sure  that,  when  my  paper 
was  eventually  read  at  the  Royal  Society,  many  were  not  disappointed  that  I  did  not 
incontinently  then  and  there  "  transmute  "  a  ton  of  lead  into  a  ton  of  gold. 
It  is  in  consequence  of  this  general  misapprehension  of  the  nature  of  my  work, 
that  I  the  more  willingly  meet  the  wishes  of  the  editor  that  I  should  say  something 
about  it.  The  paper  itself  I  need  not  reproduce,  as  it  has  appeared  in  extenso  else- 
where j1  but  there  are  many  points  touching  both  the  origin  of  the  views  I  have 
advanced  and  the  work  which  has  led  up  to  them,  on  which  I  am  glad  of  the  oppor- 
tunity of  addressing  a  wider  public. 
It  is  now  upward  of  ten  years  since  I  began  a  series  of  observations  having  for 
their  object  the  determination  of  the  chemical  constitution  of  the  atmosphere  of  the 
sun.  The  work  done,  so  far  as  the  number  of  elementary  substances  found  to  exist 
in  it,  I  summed  up  in  a  former  article  j2  but  the  ten  years'  work  had  opened  up  a 
great  number  of  problems  above  and  beyond  the  question  of  the  number  of  elements 
which  exist  in  the  solar  atmosphere,  because  we  were  dealing  with  elements  under 
conditions  which  it  is  impossible  to  represent  and  experiment  on  here. 
J"  American  Journal  of  Science  and  Arts." 
*  Printed  in  the  "Popular  Science  Monthly  Supplement"  for  August,  1878. 
