The Wadsworth dispatch. [volume] (Wadsworth, Nev.) 1892-1899, 1896-01-29
WEDNESDAY. JANUARY %, 1895
THE SEVENTY ELEMENTS.

Chemistry Has Found Them. but Does Not
Know What they Arc.
What are the elements? Those ingre
dents Of which every natural substance
is ultimately composed and into which
it may be resolved. Beings animate and
i~nanimate, the earth beneath our feet,
the stars revealed to us by the telescope,
the minutest microbia which almost es-
cape detection by our most improved
microscope, all consist Of the elements.
They make up all matter. They may be
solid, liquid or gaseous, perhaps even
ultragaseous; they may exist in a state
Of absolute purity or in a state of mix
ture or combination, but We cannot de-
stroy them, form them again or trans
mute one into another. They differ
greatly in their properties, but still they
have certain features in common. We
know some 20 kinds Of elements, appar-
emily distinct. They occupy space, and
all possess weight and inertia. They are
the possible forms which matter, as we
at present know it, assumes, and in
some directions they are the present
limits Of our knowledge Of nature.
The name elements" has at differ
ent times been applied in very different
ways. The ancient philosophers Of
Greece assumed the existence Of four
elements-viz. earth, air, water and
lre-but they used these words in a
different sense from ours. Their earth
was the principle Of solidity, their wa.
ter that Of liquidity, their air that Of vol
ability or gaseity. and their fire might
stand for enersy-not Il substance, but u
force.
The alchomists had three clements
sulphur, salt and mercury-but their
sulphur was not our sulphur, but a mys-
teal principle Of inflammability, their
mercury was not our mercury, but a
supposed principle Of metalleity, and
their salt meant solubility.
A little later the chemists Of the
eighteenth century conjured up an ele-
ment which they named phlogiston, by
which they sought to explain almost ali
chemical phenomena. The modern idea
of force and energy is not greatly differ
ont from that which underlay the term
phlogiston.
The modern chemical elements have
in them nothing metaphysical and mys-
teal. They are simply those bodies
which never diminish in weight US a
consequence of amy chemical reaction.
We can add to them, but we can take
nothing away from them. 1t must not.
however, be rashly inferred that our ell
ements are absolutely incapable of de-
composition.
All that we are entitled to say is SIM
ply that hitherto we have not been able
to decompose them. Tomorrow we may
possibly find II method by which they
may be resolved into something sim
pier. Indeed a variety of considerations
lead rs to suppose that such will ulti-
mately be the case. To find out these
absolute elements should be the grand
goal Of modern chemistry.
What is an element? How and where
are we to draw the line? There seem
to be different grades in the elementary
hierarchy. Chlorine and bromine differ
from each other much less widely than
does either OF them with oxygen, po-
tassium or iron. Nickel and cobalt are
still closer to each other, and had the
compounds of these two elements beer
alike in color instead Of being almost
mutually complementary their distinct
character might scarcely yet have passed
beyond the sphere Of controversy. But
II we come to the elements of the ''rare
earths, we no longer stand on firm
ground. The dividing line-e. G., be.
tween neodymium and praseodymium-
depends on no broad principles. And
how Is it then with the elemental or
rather metaelemental bodies whose ex.
lstence has been recently made known
by KrnSs and Nilsson? Here il becomes
scarcely possible to draw any deilnite
line. The dflernnt groups shade off so
mporceptbly into each other that we
eau not iiad Il definite boundary. Slight