THE NATURE OF THE ELEMENTS.

Evening Post, Volume XLVIII, Issue 131, 1 December 1894, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE NATURE OF THE ELEMENTS.

Of the scientific enigmas which still, at the end of the 19th century, defy solution, the nature and origin of what are called "the elements" are the most notable. It is not, perhaps, easy to give a precise logical reason for the feeling that the existence of our sixty-five elements is a strange anomaly and conceals some much' simpler state of facts. But the conviction is irresistible. We cannot conceive, on any possible doctrine of cosmogony, how these sixty - five elements came into existence. The third of them form the substance of this planet. Another third are useful, but somewhat rare. The remaining third are curiosities scattered haphazard, but very scantily, over the globe, with no other apparent function but to provide occupation for the collector and the chemist. Some of them are so like each other that only a chemist can tell them apart; others differ immeasurably from each other in every conceivable particular. In cohesion, in weight, in conductivity, in melting point, in chemical proclivities, they vary in every degree. They seem to have as much relation to each other as the pebbles .on a sea beach, or the contents of an ancient lumber room. Whether you believe that Creation was the work of design or of inconscient law, it is equally difficult to imagine how this random collection of dissimilar materials came together. — Lord Salisbury's presidential address to the British Association.