make any effort to enter into the state of mind of the parties addressed, and their expositions, therefore, often fail from lack of adaptation. Sometimes a subject familiar to teachers of great capacity is still too abstruse to be grasped by common minds. Sometimes the expounder does not understand the subject himself; and not unfrequently hypotheses are invented to explain unexplainable things, and which serve only to increase existing difficulties. A marked illustration of this is afforded by a lecture delivered not long ago before the Royal Institution, by the eminent physicist and mathematician, Sir William Thomson, who announced as his topic of discourse the curious subject, "Maxwell's Sorting Demons."
The lecture was mainly devoted to an explication of the phenomena of the diffusion of liquids and the principles it involves. Professor Thomson bad many tubes prepared, each containing two liquids of different colors, to represent the progress of diffusion, while some ingenious experiments were made by throwing the spectra of various solutions upon the screen with an electric light. The diffusibility of solids and gases was also referred to, and a just tribute paid to the memory of Graham, whose name stands most prominently associated with this branch of research.
Sir William Thomson's reasons, however, for bringing forward these phenomena of diffusion were that they stand very closely related to the present theories and speculations concerning the molecules of matter, and which aim to account for their motions. In diffusion, the molecules gradually intermingle, according to definite laws, which are variable in different cases. The molecules do not move capriciously or irregularly, as all chemical action and all crystallization prove. But why do they move this way or that, and why always go the same way in the same conditions? This "why" is the perplexing word of science, and when we get down among objects the very existence of which is hypothetical it carries us far beyond our depth. But Professor Maxwell thinks he gives us aid here by inventing a host of little demons—living creatures with wills and infallible intelligence—which sort the molecules and regulate their extraordinary motions. In a very brief abstract of his lecture which Sir William Thomson has published, he thus explains the attributes and offices of these remarkable agents:
He can not create or annul energy; but, just as a living animal does, he can store up limited quantities of energy, and reproduce them at will. By operating selectively on individual atoms he can reverse the natural dissipation of energy, can cause one half of a closed jar of air, or of a bar of iron, to become glowingly hot and the other ice cold; can direct the energy of the moving molecules of a basin of water to throw the water up to a height and leave it there proportionately cooled (1° Fahr. for seven hundred and seventy-two feet of ascent): can "sort" the molecules in a solution of salt or in a mixture of two gases, so as to reverse the natural process of diffusion, and produce concentration of the solution in one portion of the water, leaving pure water in the remainder of the space occupied; or in the other case, separate the gases into different parts of the containing vessel.
The classification, according to which the ideal demon is to sort them, may he according to the essential character of the atom: for instance, all atoms of hydrogen to be let go to the left, or stopped from crossing to
