CIV ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



though faint, was still visible in a large telescope and the character of 

 the nebula that surrounded it presented problems not easy for the 

 theoretical astronomer to solve. Allusion was also made to the sun, 

 including the results of the observations of the total eclipse on the 

 18th of May; to the continued discovery of asteroids, and to the work 

 which had been done upon Eros; to the Leonid showers of meteors, 

 which, though not seen to advantage in Toronto, had evidently been 

 well observed at Winnipeg and at Echo Mountain, California; to the 

 Caipe Comet, the brightest which had appeared since 1882, to Encke's 

 Comet; to the success achieved at Flagstaff Observatory in photograph- 

 ing the Zodiacal Light; to the synchronism of auroral displays at the 

 north and south poles, and to the investigations of Prof. E. A. Fessen- 

 den, in regard to Gravitation. 



Eeferring to this, Mr. Lumsden said Prof. J. J. Thomson was able 

 to show. Philosophical Magazine, April, 1881, that electrical charges 

 increased the inertia of bodies. And, in Phil. Mag., Dec, 1899, that, 

 •under special conditions the atom could, apparently, be split up into 

 numerous parts called " corpuscles,'^ the number in the hydrogen atom 

 being of the order of at least 1000, and the corpuscles were electrically 

 charged. With these two experimental results before him, Thomson 

 then undertook a mathematical investigation to determine whether the 

 " corpuscular " charges would be sufficient to account for the entire 

 inertia <oi bodies, but was unable to make out corpuscular spaces and 

 surfaces enough to accommodate more than a portion of the requisite 

 charges. Here, Prof. Fessenden took up the work, and assuming the 

 corpuscles to be vortices of a special form and orientated in a special 

 way, appears to have found surfaces and spaces enough for electric 

 charges sufficient to account entirely for the property known as " iner- 

 tia " of bodies ; at the same time, he undertook to show that these 

 minute corpuscular charges would produce a change of density of the 

 ether surrounding each particle, an effect akin to, though differing 

 from, a ma,gnetic " field " extending outward indefinitely in all direc- 

 tions and decreasing inversely as the square of the distance — producing, 

 in a word, the effect known as gravitation, the velocity of which would 

 be many times greater than that of light, viz., 10^'^, but it may be asked. 

 Does not an electric charge need to be explained itself? Eecent inves- 

 tigations along these lines seem to point towards the conclusion that 

 an electric charge, apparently, consists of a specialized strain, tension or 

 pressure of the ether that may be isolated or stored on the surface of 

 bodies or the particles of which bodies consist, the energy of which 

 strain cannot be communicated to the normal ether except it be in a 

 special condition. 



