606 Stoney — Cause of Double Lines in Spectra. 



aether. This represents a state of things under which, though the size of the curve 

 would dwindle during the flight of the molecule, the periodic times would remain 

 unaltered, and the lines in the spectrum unchanged in position. However, though 

 this agrees in many respects with what is observed, the conditions are evidently 

 not so simple, since under these conditions the lines of the spectrum, while fainter 

 at lower temperatures, would retain the same relative intensities at all temperatures, 

 which is not the case. 



If the vortex theory of ponderable matter be true, it is in the study of the 

 dynamical, or rather kinematical, relations in, and in the neighbourhood of, vortex 

 rings and tangles, that we must put our hope. The vortex hypothesis, however, 

 would suggest charges of magnetic moment rather than of statical electricity as 

 associated with the atoms of ponderable matter. Perhaps both are present, and 

 that the electrical charges are maintained by motions of the magnetism. Some 

 motion of this kind must apparently be consequent on the velocity of over 30,000 

 metres per second with which the molecule, in common with the rest of the earth, 

 is travelling through the rectilinear vortices of the aether. We must remember, 

 too, that statical charges of electricity consist of motions or stresses not in the 

 molecules themselves but elsewhere. These considerations naturally suggest 

 others, but we need not follow them up, as it is unnecessary for our present 

 purpose to do so. This is fortunate, since we can as yet only grope in the region 

 which concerns itself with the fundamental facts of nature. 



Whatever our ignorance on such subj ects may be, one solid advance seems to be 

 harvested by the investigation in the foregoing pages. It has shown howto interpret 

 the spectrum of a gas when, as in the case of the monad elements, it consists of 

 double lines, so as to extract from the observations important particulars about the 

 several pendulous elliptic components of some of the motions going on within the 

 molecules ; it indicates the character and the limits of the information about these 

 motions which the siiectroscope can suj^ply ; and it puts us on the track of further 

 knowledge by guiding the hypotheses that we should frame. It also cannot fail to 

 impress upon us what an amazingly complicated system even one molecule of 

 matter is ; what an inconceivable number and variety of events are crowded into 

 every speck of space about us, within even the millionth part of one second of time ; 

 and how very little about nature is yet known to man. 



In this branch of investigation we are wofully in want of more minutely exact 

 and fuller observations on the spectra of gases than have yet been published. It 

 may be hoped that there will be a great improvement in this respect when the 

 great work is published which has been recently announced by Professor Rowland 

 from the laboratory of the Johns Hopkins University. 



