BY JAMES TOLSON, ESQ. 53 
vious adjacent ones. Thus, in a liquid there is a vibratory, 
rotatory, and progressive motion. In the gaseous state the 
molecules are entirely without the sphere of their mutual attraction. 
They fly forward in straight lines, according to the ordinary laws 
of motion, until they impinge against other molecules, or against 
a fixed envelope which they cannot penetrate, and they return in 
the opposite direction with, in the main, their original velocity. If 
the molecules were in space where no external force could act upon 
them they would fly apart and disappear in infinity. But if con- 
tained in any vessel the molecules impinge in all directions against 
the sides and thus arises the pressure which a gas exerts on its 
own vessel.’’—Ganot, A., op. cit. 
The original source of all heat or energy is the sun, 
and when we come to examine the heat of any body we 
are simply noting the amount of the energy which has been 
exerted upon its molecules, according to the particular 
manner in which that energy was stored. In fuel, for 
example, the energy of the sun’s rays has acted upon the 
leaves and stems of plants, and, in conjunction with the so- 
called vital forces, has produced those vegetable composi- 
tions which retain their chemical constituents in such a 
form that by bringing the oxygen of the air into contact 
with them we can induce docomposition and thereby release 
as much energy as was originally expended in building 
them up. This energy appears as heat, and we simply 
transfer a portion of the original heat or energy, which was 
given out by the sun to the plants forming the fuel we are 
burning, to the substance we wish to heat; this again is 
dissipated into space or absorbed by other bodies, and so 
through increasing changes, but without loss, so far as the 
whole universe is concerned. In food, which has the same 
origin as fuel, we find the energy of the sun’s rays stored 
up in the manner best suited to the requirements of the 
organism for which it is intended. 
“Vegetables serve to transmute the energy of the sun’s rays into 
fuel and food. Animals, again, consume this food and transmute 
it partly into useful work and partly into the degraded form of 
diffused heat.’’—Stewart, op. cit. 
If the ‘Dynamical Theory,” as it is called, be accepted 
as correct, and the evidence in its favour is simply over- 
whelming, it will be clearly seen that any form of energy 
