intelligence, and then with a gathering recognition. Into his

mind came a strange echo of that ancestral fancy, that fancy of a

Stone Age savage, dead and scattered bones among the drift two

hundred thousand years ago.

'Ye auld thing,' he said-and his eyes were shining, and he made

a kind of grabbing gesture with his hand; 'ye auld red thing…

We'll have ye YET.'

CHAPTER THE FIRST

THE NEW SOURCE OF ENERGY

Section I

The problem which was alreadybeing mooted by such scientific men

as Ramsay, Rutherford, and Soddy, in the very beginning of the

twentieth century, the problem of inducing radio-activity in the

heavier elements and so tapping the internal energy of atoms, was

solved by a wonderful combination of induction, intuition, and

luck by Holsten so soon as the year 1933. From the first

detection of radio-activity to its first subjugation to human

purpose measured little more than a quarter of a century. For

twenty years after that, indeed, minor difficulties prevented any

striking practical application of his success, but the essential

thing was done, this new boundary in the march of human progress

was crossed, in that year. He set up atomic disintegration in a

minute particle of bismuth; it exploded with great violence into

a heavy gas of extreme radio-activity, which disintegrated in its

turn in the course of seven days, and it was only after another

year's work that he was able to show practically that the last

result of this rapid release of energy was gold. But the thing

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