Continuity 31 



interest, and by some is thought to hold 

 the field. 1 



Then again Radiation is showing signs 

 of becoming atomic or discontinuous. 

 The corpuscular theory of radiation is 

 by no means so dead as in my youth we 

 thought it was. Some radiation is cer- 

 tainly corpuscular, and even the etherial 

 kind shows indications, which may be 

 misleading, that it is spotty, or locally 

 concentrated into points, as if the wave- 

 front consisted of detached specks or 

 patches; or, as J. J. Thomson says, "the 

 wave-front must be more analogous to 

 bright specks on a dark ground than to a 

 uniformly illuminated surface, " thus sug- 

 gesting that the Ether may be fibrous in 

 structure, and that a wave runs along 

 lines of electric force; as the genius of 

 Faraday surmised might be possible, in 

 his "Thoughts on Ray Vibrations. " In- 

 deed Newton guessed something of the 

 same kind, I fancy, when he superposed 

 ether-pulses on his corpuscles. 



Whatever be the truth in this matter, a 



1 Se;e page 37. 



