OPTICS, CHEMISTRY, AND BIOLOGY 6 1 



effect on the whole electron is likely to remain 

 undiscoverable. 



Here, then, we have a remarkable result. The 

 world may be blazing with a powerful light quite 

 inaccessible to our present senses, and quite un- 

 discoverable to our instruments, and yet it may 

 (unlike extreme ultra-violet light as hitherto known) 

 have a whole world of responsive substances to act 

 upon. This light will make up a considerable 

 portion of the energy passing through the ether, 

 and we may never be able to detect it. Yet it 

 is absorbed by matter (by infra-electrons, in fact); 

 but the effects of such absorption are internal, 

 and are embodied in small-scale phenomena in 

 the infra-world, just as sunlight is absorbed by 

 the earth without perceptibly affecting its annual 

 period of revolution. 



2. Infra-Chemistry. It is a mistake to suppose 

 that the enormous density of the objects of the 

 infra-world 10 11 times that of water precludes the 

 happening of the ordinary physical and chemical 

 events known to us. Liquid and gaseous states are 

 quite as possible there as they are in our world. 

 A solid state implies that the atoms are so closely 

 packed as to admit no displacement among each 

 other. In a liquid state this structure is loosened 

 to such an extent that the atoms are rarely out of 

 each other's range of gravitational attraction, but 

 still are free to change their grouping. A gaseous 



