Scientific men throughout the world are studying the pro- perties
of radium and methods of producing it, and already it has attained high commercial value. Its price, according to the Manchester Guardian, is £12,000 an ounce, and even at that figure the demand is greater than the supply. The demand is due first of all to its use in therapeutics, radium being more efficient than the X ray, especially in the treatment of cancer. It will, however, in the end be used to produce light a very little morsel so exciting fluorescence in sulphide of zinc as to supply a "practically permanent illuminant." If its price can be brought down, it will also be used to develop other forms of energy, perhaps sufficient to drive motor-care and railway engines ; and though chemists are for the moment baffled, the reward will be so great that their researches must ultimately be successful. They may even produce it direct from hydrogen, and so give us a new and vast motive-power. The world appears, in fact, to be on the edge of grand dis- coveries in applied chemistry, which may or may not increase its happiness. They will at all events increase man's dominion over Nature, enable him to extinguish many diseases, perhaps to grow two blades of corn where one grows now.
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