Excerpt from Proceedings of the Bristol Naturalists' Society, Vol. 8: Part I, 1895-96 The same gaseous element has now been obtained from several other rare minerals containing uranium, yttrium, and thorium. Professor Ramsay finds that the density of helium compared with hydrogen is about and that the ratio of the specific heats has the theoretical value for a monatomic gas; the atomic weight therefore appears to be about 4, and we have therefore now an element between hydrogen (atomic weight=1) and lithium (atomic weight Helium, like argon, is characterised by its remarkable inertness. The value of Professor Ramsay's researches, chiefly those on argon and helium which have excited the greatest interest, has been widely recognised both in this country and abroad, and he has been elected a correspond ing member of the Institute of France (academie des Sciences), and a Foreign Member of the Societe Holland aise des Sciences (leyden), of the Societe d'histoire Naturelle of Geneva, and of the Bohemian Academy of Sciences. He has also received the Barnard Medal of the Colombia College, New York, awarded by the American Academy of Sciences; the Davy Medal of the Royal Society; the Leblanc Medal of the French Chemical Society, and jointly with Lord Rayleigh he has received the Hodgkins Prize of awarded by the Smithsonian Institute, Washington, and a prize of francs awarded by the French Academy. Professor Ramsay is the author of several well-known text-books of chemistry. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.