Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/534

530 acetate by putting a piece of zinc into the solution, and forming the well-known lead-tree. When I bombarded this freshly precipitated lead, I could get no trace of the line; the helium line, too, was absent. I then tried another experiment. I took a piece of lead and divided it into two parts. The first of these I bombarded by the cathode rays: it gave the line quite distinctly. The other part I dissolved in boiling nitric acid, getting lead nitrate. The nitrate was heated and converted into oxide, and this was bombarded by the cathode rays: it did not give the line, showing that the  is not produced by the bombardment, but is something stored up in the lead, which can be detached from it when the lead is dissolved. I have tried several samples of lead; the one which gave the line most distinctly was a piece of lead from the roof of Trinity College Chapel, several hundred years old. A sample of Kahlbaum's chemically pure lead, which must, I suppose, at no distant date have been subjected to severe ordeals by fire and water, showed the line quite distinctly, though not so well as the older lead. I have tried similar experiments with iron, and found that iron which gave the three line very distinctly ceased to do so after it had been dissolved in acid.

As the most obvious explanation of is that it is, bearing the same relation to hydrogen that ozone does to oxygen, and produced in some way from the hydrogen dissolved in the metal, I tried if I could produce it by charging metals with large quantities of hydrogen, and then seeing if the hydrogen coming from the metal gave any traces of. Thus, for example, I tested the hydrogen given off from hot palladium, but found no trace of. I then charged nickel at a temperature of about 355° C. with hydrogen in the way recommended by Sabatier, but found no increase in the brightness of the over nickel that had not been deliberately exposed to hydrogen. I tried if the brightness of the line would be increased by adding hydrogen to the bulb A, in which the bombardment took place, but found no effect. I also tried adding oxygen to this bulb, thinking that if it was it would combine with the oxygen, and thus be eliminated, but no great diminution in the intensity was produced by this treatment. The gas seems quite stable, at least it can be kept for several days without suffering any diminution that can be detected; indeed, when once it has got into a bulb, there is considerable difficulty in getting the bulb free from it. It must be remembered, too, that by the method it is produced the gas is subjected all the time to electric discharges which would break it up unless it possesses very great stability. Thus if is a polymeric modification of hydrogen, it must possess the following properties:

 1. It must be very stable. 2. It must resist the action of oxygen.