nce has delivered, what has been called, its
"ultim-atom." The Greeks called the elemental particles of matter
"atoms" because they esteemed them "indivisible," but now in the light
of the X-ray we can witness the disintegration of the atom into
electrons. All the chemical and physical properties of matter, except
perhaps weight, seem to depend upon the number and movement of the
negative and positive electrons and by their rearrangement one element
may be transformed into another.

So the electric furnace, where the highest attainable temperature is
combined with the divisive and directive force of the current, is a
magical machine for accomplishment of the metamorphoses desired by the
creative chemist. A hundred years ago Davy, by dipping the poles of his
battery into melted soda lye, saw forming on one of them a shining
globule like quicksilver. It was the metal sodium, never before seen by
man. Nowadays this process of electrolysis (electric loosening) is
carried out daily by the ton at Niagara.

The reverse process, electro-synthesis (electric combining), is equally
simple and even more important. By passing a strong electric current
through a mixture of lime and coke the metal calcium disengages itself
from the oxygen of the lime and attaches itself to the carbon. Or, to
put it briefly,

CaO + 3C --> CaC_{2} + CO
lime coke calcium carbon
carbide monoxide

This reaction is of peculiar importance because it bridges the gulf
between the organic and inorganic worlds. It was formerly supposed that
the substances found in plants and animals, mostly complex compounds of
carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, could only be produced by "vital forces."
If this were true it meant that chemistry was limited to the mineral
kingdom and to the extraction of such carbon compounds as happened to
exist ready formed in the vegetable and animal kingdoms. But fortunately
this barrier to human achievement proved purely illusory. The organic
field, once man had broken into it, proved easier to work in than the
inorganic.

But it must be confessed that man is dreadfully clumsy about it yet. He
takes a thousand horsepower engine and an electric furnace at several
thousand degrees to get carbon into combination with hydrogen while the
little green leaf in the sunshine does it quietly without getting hot
about it. Evidently man is working as wastefully as when he used a
thousand slaves to drag a st