on the subject amounts to little more than the well-established fact that gases of a different nature when brought into contact do not arrange themselves according to their density, but they spontaneously diffuse through each other so as to remain in an intimate state of mixture for any length of time.” For the fissured jar of J. W. Döbereiner he substituted a glass tube closed by a plug of plaster of Paris, and with this simple appliance he developed the law now known by his name “that the diffusion rate of gases is inversely as the square root of their density.” (See Diffusion.) He further studied the passage of gases by transpiration through fine tubes, and by effusion through a minute hole in a platinum disk, and was enabled to show that gas may enter a vacuum in three different ways: (1) by the molecular movement of diffusion, in virtue of which a gas penetrates through the pores of a disk of compressed graphite; (2) by effusion through an orifice of sensible dimensions in a platinum disk the relative times of the effusion of gases in mass being similar to those of the molecular diffusion, although a gas is usually carried by the former kind of impulse with a velocity many thousand times as great as is demonstrable by the latter; and (3) by the peculiar rate of passage due to transpiration through fine tubes, in which the ratios appear to be in direct relation with no other known property of the same gases—thus hydrogen has exactly double the transpiration rate of nitrogen, the relation of those gases as to density being as 1 : 14. He subsequently examined the passage of gases through septa or partitions of india-rubber, unglazed earthenware and plates of metals such as palladium, and proved that gases pass through these septa neither by diffusion nor effusion nor by transpiration, but in virtue of a selective absorption which the septa appear to exert on the gases in contact with them. By this means (“atmolysis”) he was enabled partially to separate oxygen from air.
His early work on the movements of gases led him to examine the spontaneous movements of liquids, and as a result of the experiments he divided bodies into two classes—crystalloids, such as common salt, and colloids, of which gum-arabic is a type—the former having high and the latter low diffusibility. He also proved that the process of liquid diffusion causes partial decomposition of certain chemical compounds, the potassium sulphate, for instance, being separated from the aluminium sulphate in alum by the higher diffusibility of the former salt. He also extended his work on the transpiration of gases to liquids, adopting the method of manipulation devised by J. L. M. Poiseuille. He found that dilution with water does not effect proportionate alteration in the transpiration velocities of different liquids, and a certain determinable degree of dilution retards the transpiration velocity.
With regard to Graham’s more purely chemical work, in 1833 he showed that phosphoric anhydride and water form three distinct acids, and he thus established the existence of polybasic acids, in each of which one or more equivalents of hydrogen are replaceable by certain metals (see Acid). In 1835 he published the results of an examination of the properties of water of crystallization as a constituent of salts. Not the least interesting part of this inquiry was the discovery of certain definite salts with alcohol analogous to hydrates, to which the name of alcoholates was given. A brief paper entitled “Speculative Ideas on the Constitution of Matter” (1863) possesses special interest in connexion with work done since his death, because in it he expressed the view that the various kinds of matter now recognized as different elementary substances may possess one and the same ultimate or atomic molecule in different conditions of movement.
Graham’s Elements of Chemistry, first published in 1833, went through several editions, and appeared also in German, remodelled under J. Otto’s direction. His Chemical and Physical Researches were collected by Dr James Young and Dr Angus Smith, and printed “for presentation only” at Edinburgh in 1876, Dr Smith contributing to the volume a valuable preface and analysis of its contents. See also T. E. Thorpe, Essays in Historical Chemistry (1902).
GRAHAME, JAMES (1765–1811), Scottish poet, was born in
Glasgow on the 22nd of April 1765, the son of a successful
lawyer. After completing his literary course at Glasgow university,
Grahame went in 1784 to Edinburgh, where he qualified
as writer to the signet, and subsequently for the Scottish bar,
of which he was elected a member in 1795. But his preferences
had always been for the Church, and when he was forty-four
he took Anglican orders, and became a curate first at Shipton,
Gloucestershire, and then at Sedgefield, Durham. His works
include a dramatic poem, Mary Queen of Scots (1801),
The Sabbath (1804), British Georgics (1804), The Birds of Scotland
(1806), and Poems on the Abolition of the Slave Trade (1810).
His principal work, The Sabbath, a sacred and descriptive poem
in blank verse, is characterized by devotional feeling and by
happy delineation of Scottish scenery. In the notes to his poems
he expresses enlightened views on popular education, the criminal
law and other public questions. He was emphatically a friend
of humanity—a philanthropist as well as a poet. He died in
Glasgow on the 14th of September 1811.
GRAHAM’S DYKE (or Sheugh = trench), a local name for the
Roman fortified frontier, consisting of rampart, forts and road,
which ran across the narrow isthmus of Scotland from the Forth
to the Clyde (about 36 m.), and formed from A.D. 140 till about
185 the northern frontier of Roman Britain. The name is
locally explained as recording a victorious assault on the defences
by one Robert Graham and his men; it has also been connected
with the Grampian Hills and the Latin surveying term groma.
But, as is shown by its earliest recorded spelling, Grymisdyke
(Fordun, A.D. 1385), it is the same as the term Grim’s Ditch which
occurs several times in England in connexion with early ramparts—for
example, near Wallingford in south Oxfordshire or between
Berkhampstead (Herts) and Bradenham (Bucks). Grim seems
to be a Teutonic god or devil, who might be credited with the
wish to build earthworks in unreasonably short periods of time.
By antiquaries the Graham’s Dyke is usually styled the Wall
of Pius or the Antonine Vallum, after the emperor Antoninus
Pius, in whose reign it was constructed. See further Britain:
Roman.
(F. J. H.)
GRAHAM’S TOWN, a city of South Africa, the administrative
centre for the eastern part of the Cape province, 106 m. by rail
N.E. of Port Elizabeth and 43 m. by rail N.N.W. of Port Alfred.
Pop. (1904) 13,887, of whom 7283 were whites and 1837 were
electors. The town is built in a basin of the grassy hills forming
the spurs of the Zuurberg, 1760 ft. above sea-level. It is a
pleasant place of residence, has a remarkably healthy climate,
and is regarded as the most English-like town in the Cape. The
streets are broad, and most of them lined with trees. In the
High Street are the law courts, the Anglican cathedral of St
George, built from designs by Sir Gilbert Scott, and Commemoration
Chapel, the chief place of worship of the Wesleyans, erected
by the British emigrants of 1820. The Roman Catholic cathedral
of St Patrick, a Gothic building, is to the left of the High Street.
The town hall, also in the Gothic style, has a square clock tower
built on arches over the pavement. Graham’s Town is one
of the chief educational centres in the Cape province. Besides
the public schools and the Rhodes University College (which
in 1904 took over part of the work carried on since 1855 by St
Andrew’s College), scholastic institutions are maintained by
religious bodies. The town possesses two large hospitals, which
receive patients from all parts of South Africa, and the government
bacteriological institute. It is the centre of trade for an
extensive pastoral and agricultural district. Owing to the sour
quality of the herbage in the surrounding zuurveld, stock-breeding
and wool-growing have been, however, to some extent replaced
by ostrich-farming, for which industry Graham’s Town is the
most important entrepôt. Dairy farming is much practised in
the neighbourhood.
In 1812 the site of the town was chosen as the headquarters of the British troops engaged in protecting the frontier of Cape Colony from the inroads of the Kaffirs, and it was named after Colonel John Graham (1778–1821), then commanding the forces. (Graham had commanded the light infantry battalion at the taking of the Cape by the British in the action of the 6th of January 1806. He also took part in campaigns in Italy and Holland during the Napoleonic wars.) In 1819 an attempt was
