ley, the
discoverer of oxygen, and Cavendish, the discoverer of nitrogen,
think could they step into the laboratory of Professor Ramsay and see
test-tubes containing argon and helium and krypton and neon and zenon?
Could they more than vaguely understand the papers contributed in recent
years to the Royal Society, in which Professor Ramsay explains how these
new constituents of the atmosphere are obtained by experiments on liquid
air. "Here," says Professor Ramsay, in effect, in a late paper to the
society, "is the apparatus with which we liquefy hydrogen in order to
separate neon from helium by liquefying the former while the helium
still remains gaseous." Neon, helium, liquid air, liquid hydrogen--these
would seem strange terms to the men who on discovering oxygen and
nitrogen named them "dephlogisticated air" and "phlogisti-cated air"
respectively.

Again, how elementary seems the teaching of Her-schel, wonderful though
it was in its day, when compared with our present knowledge of the
sidereal system as outlined in the theories of Sir Norman Lock-yer.
Herschel studied the sun-spots, for example, with assiduity, and even
suggested a possible connection between sun-spots and terrestrial
weather. So far, then, he would not be surprised on hearing the
announcement of Professor Lockyer's recent paper before the Royal
Society on the connection between sun-spots and the rainfall in India.
But when the paper goes on to speak of the actual chemical nature of the
sun-spots, as tested by a spectroscope; to tell of a "cool" stage when
the vapor of iron furnishes chief spectrum lines, and of a "hot" stage
when the iron has presumably been dissociated into unknown "proto-iron"
constituents--then indeed does it go far beyond the comprehension of the
keenest eighteenth-century intellect, though keeping within the range of
understanding of the mere scientific tyro of to-day.

Or yet again, consider a recent paper contributed by Professor Lockyer
to the Royal Society, entitled "The New Star in Perseus: Preliminary
Note"--referring to the new star that flashed suddenly on the vision of
the terrestrial observers at more than first magnitude on February 22,
1901. This "star," the paper tells us, when studied by its spectrum,
is seen to be due to the impact of two swarms of meteors out in
space--swarms moving in different directions "with a differential
velocity of something like seven hundred miles a second." Every
astronomer of to-da