Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1879-01-18
Hydrogen.

| Paris Academy OF Sciences, TO the Ell
| feet that lie believes he las succeeded
in realizing Faraday's famous prophecy
with regard to reducing the so-called
chemical elements to air, the prospect
Of another grand discovery is added 10
| the series of extraordinary facts which
have marked the scientific annals Of the
present year. NJ. Dumas, the venera-
BILE and accomplished French chemist,
was the medium through which Mr..
I Lockyer conveyed these startling
( iidings. The sixty odd elements, OF
which, according TO the school books
now in use, all terrestrial matter is
composed, are in reality, it is said, not
elementary but compound bodies.
/ Science has been deceiving itself wi h
mere Protean combinations of one arch
substance. Instead of sixty or seventy
| elements, the number may be even less
than the traditional four-earth, air,
! fire and water, which held so long q
sway from the Aristotelian period until
the days of Robert Coyle. In making
the communication to the Paris
Academy, III. Dumas added that the
conclusion reached by Mr.. Lockyer was
the result of three years assiduous re-
search. Conscious of its extraordinary
character and of the entirely new as
pect which the discovery will give to
chemical science, Mr.. Lockyer states
that he will send photographs and other
details, which the Academy will rightly
look for with suspended belief.
The honor of achieving q prodigious
analytical success, which, If verified,
must ever be memorable in the history
of molecular physics has for some time
past been an object of strenuous rivalry
among few of our leading scientific
workers. Mr.. Lockyer believes that,
in spite of the multiform aspects of the
world in which we live. there is but
one form of matter which is truly ele-
mentary. The primal element is pre-
sented to us in the shape of hydrogen.
1t is not little remarkable that the
nature of hydrogen should have been
a question of which the leading French
chemists have recently been devoting
their energies. 1t is now we'll known,
thanks to M. Pickett and his French
colleagues, that hydrogen, in its gase-
Gus form, can be, and has been, reduced
to liquid condition. Mr.. Lockyer
himself has arrived, by means of the
spectroscope, at the conclusion that
hydrogen can no longer be regarded as
simple element. Further he believes
that he has proved that hydrogen is
the one body of which the various
metals and earths that have hitherto
constituted the chemists catalogue of
elements are composed. So novel and
striking an Interpretation of all the
phenomena of animate and inanimate
nature of all that we can see in the
starry depths around us, as we'll us our
own globe, is difficult at first sight to
entertain. That the substances we have
| hitherto known as single unit in the
great cosmical laboratory should be en-
dowed with such Protean capacities of
form, is q conception which utterly
eclipses all that poetry or mythology
have ever inspired, and the world be-
comes infinitely more wonderful by
such revelations as now seem to be
brought within our grasp.
1t is remarkable that the discovery
which is attracting so much attention
has not been made-if made at all-in
the particular line of investigation in
which Faraday was SO distinguished o
worker. Mr.. Norman Lockyer is
neither chemist nor physicist. The
revelation has been obtained by means
of an instrument which Faraday did
not live to see, and which, since his day.
has created an entirely new department
of scientific observation. The spectre,
scope, standing on independent
ground, ultimately threatens the prov-
ince of the physicist and the chemist
alike, and at present it is hard to say
where its claims will end. His expert
ments, so far as they are known, have
not been restricted to spectroscope ex-
animation of the sun and other remote
celestial bodies; for it is said that the
most critical and conclusive of the
series have been performed upon ter
restrials metals in his own laboratory.
He is understood to say that pure
aluminium is the only element" he
cannot at present break down into its
Heterogeneous com binations. and. so ia,
as analysis of a directly physical kind
is concerned, he believes it is possible
to 1issociate most of the so-called ele.
mentary bodies by means of the com.
mon Bunsen burner.
Until few weeks have elapsed, the
appetite for further particulars of Mr.,
Lockyer's communication to the Paris
Academy must remain unsatisfed. II
seems quite possible that the result of the
parallel investigations of a purely phys.
zeal kind, which have for some time
past been proceeding concurrently with
those of the spectroscope, may be
made known to us almost as soon as
Mr.. Lockyer's paper is communicated
to the Royal Society. But at present
the spectroscope, as the oracle which
is to pronounce the fate of the "ele.
ments," is decidedly in the ascendant.
The spectroscope conveys the possessor
to regions which Arabian genii never
feigned to penetrate, and the messages
which are being daily brought us from
the sun and the starry depths may con-
sole us for living at time when truth
is proven to be incidentally more To-
mantle than the boldest flight of fiction.
1t is a common complaint in the
, scientific world that the power to use
the spectroscope is at present possessed
of a very limited number of mon. and