in this his first important research he employs the balance—"the essential instrument of all chemical research." He heated water in a closed and weighed glass vessel for a hundred and one days, and at the termination of the experiment found that the vessel had lost 17·4 grains, and on evaporation of the water a solid residue weighing 20·4 grains was obtained—the excess being due to unavoidable experimental error. Lavoisier concluded that water when heated was not transmuted into earth, which was the theory entertained by the alchemists and some of the pneumatic chemists. He proved that the water dissolved some of the constituents of the glass—a conclusion confirmed by Scheele. This research had a far-reaching and an important bearing on the notions or theories of the times—theories that had existed for centuries were to be swept away by his clinching experimental proof of their absurdity; the art of alchemy and the pursuit of the philosopher's stone was rendered futile; but, above all, the experiments proved that the old alchemical idea of the transmutation to be false;[1] and it led him to
- ↑ That a distinguished chemist should in the twentieth century lecture on "The Transmutation of the Elements," would have seemed absurd and impossible to any of our scientific forefathers. Yet this was the title of a lecture delivered at the London Institution on 28th January 1907 by Sir William Ramsay, who showed the influence of electricity on the break up of matter. Radium has shaken our ideas about the ultimate atom and the elements, and is always, though slowly, breaking up and giving off various products—helium among others. The ultra-violet radiations tend to break up metals. These things, viewed in connection with the latest electrical theories, appear
