256  What  the  Atmosphere  is  Made  of.  {Amj*™r\mATm' 
their  mark  upon  the  chemical  world,  there  was  the  constant  run- 
ning fire  of  comment  by  one  intimate  with  every  detail  in  the  long 
and  complicated  processes.  How  interesting,  for  example,  in  the 
naming  of  neon,  to  learn  that  it  was  the  young  son  of  Sir  William, 
home  on  a  vacation  from  school,  who  strolling  into  the  laboratory 
learned  of  the  discovery  of  the  gas.  "And  is  it  truly  new?"  he 
queried,  and  on  being  assured  that  it  was,  he  said,  "  Why  not 
call  it  Novum?"  The  Latin  terminology  was,  however,  not  of  the 
customary  order,  so  the  Greek  was  called  into  requisition  and 
"  Neon  "  it  became. 
The  lecturer  took  to  his  country  most  of  the  credit  for  discoveries 
with  reference  to  the  atmosphere,  noting  that  Britain  is  proverbially 
ruler  of  the  seas ;  that  she,  in  the  opinion  of  many  is  acquiring  too 
great  dominion  over  the  land  and  in  the  third  element,  air,  "  all  but 
one  of  the  important  [chemical]  discoveries  were  made  by  English- 
men." 
In  his  introductory  lecture  Sir  William  gave  a  short  history 
of  the  chemistry  of  air  and  displayed  in  it  some  of  his  philological 
lore,  telling  his  hearers  that  gas  and  ghost  are  kindred  words,  gust 
being  another  relative,  indicative  of  the  fancied  relations  between 
air  and  the  spirit  or  life.  "  Gas  is  a  made  word,"  said  the  lecturer, 
"  and  is  common  to  modern  languages,  while  another  such  manu- 
facture, 'blast'  was  coined  in  expression  of  the  life  of  the  stars. 
But  since  stars  have  no  life  from  man's  point  of  view,  it  has  not 
come  into  familiar  use." 
The  historical  story  was  a  very  interesting  one,  pivoting  on  the 
old  "  phlogiston,"  which  became  a  catch-all  for  the  explanation  of 
obscure  phenomena.  Phlogiston  was  that  which  substances  lost 
in  various  processes  of  burning.  The  scum  of  melted  lead — now 
known  to  be  lead  oxide — was  made  by  phlogiston  and  if  removed 
the  lead  was  dephlogisticated.  Air  might  likewise  be  dephlogisti- 
cated,  and  as  this  material  was  added  or  removed  the  intricate 
phenomena  resulted. 
The  four  elements  of  the  ancients,  fire,  water,  earth  and  air, 
with  contrasted  qualities,  individually  and  in  pairs,  persisted  till 
the  fifteenth  or  sixteenth  centuries.  Earth  was  cold  and  dry;  air, 
hot  and  moist;  water,  cold  and  wet,  and  fire,  hot  and  dry.  Boyle 
in  the  early  sixteen  hundreds ;  Mayow,  born  during  the  life  of 
Boyle,  but  quiet  and  practically  unnoticed  and  Stephen  Hales, 
worked  each  diligently  as  chemists,  considering  all  gases  to  be  air 
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