PHYSICAL SCIENCE AND ITS CONNECTIONS. 5 



effects of internal stresses on a magnetic nucleus or a 

 piezo-electric action on crystals in the crust? Did the 

 moon breaking away leave the hollows the sea fills ? an 

 unlikely suggestion, or can the atmospheric circulation 

 while the earth was mostly molten, if it ever was so and 

 was not originally a mass of pretty cold meteors, have 

 been intense enough to blow the scum of the earth into 

 the continents, although the then equatorial effect of solar 

 radiation cannot have been as great in proportion to the 

 effects of general terrestrial temperature as they are 

 now ? What is the nature of solar circulation ? With 

 no equatorial heating its conditions differ in toto from 

 terrestrial atmospheric circulation. Does the motion of 

 sunspots show that the solar circulation is round vortices 

 parallel to its axis, or can vortical circulation take place 

 round other axes for any length of time? Is the state of 

 matter inside the sun different from anything we know 

 here owing to the enormous temperatures and pressures 

 there? Is matter destroyed there, as has been suggested, 

 or, more probably, are the poor atoms so tortured that, 

 may be, one end of an atom may be miles away from its 

 other end, and the structure like one of those proposed 

 for the ether ? Would this account for the darkness of 

 sunspots? How are we to explain the thinness of the 

 radiating layer round the sun, with an enormously hot and 

 apparently opaque mass behind ? What is the physical 

 condition of nebulae and of new stars ? Spectroscopy has 

 told us a great deal about the structure of stars and star 

 systems, and it has similarly told us a great deal about the 

 structure of atoms. Double lines betoken rotating stars 

 and rotating atomic motions. We are still only on the 

 foundations of the roads between physics and chemistry 

 in investigating the structure of matter. Only the other 

 day our means of investigation in the ultra-violet have 

 been enormously extended. Whole forests of lines have 

 been added to the spectrum of hydrogen. Wnat are 

 the motions these Fourier series represent ? Can we sum 

 these series ? Can we invent a structure that vibrates so ? 

 Some years ago Lord Rayleigh spoke of the desirability of 



