526 



NATURE 



[September 27, 1900 



observed, there may be no stream of rnatter attached to 

 the electric charges which carry the current. It has con- 

 sequently been suggested, and with good reason, that in 

 solids and melted metals, which conduct metallically, the 

 electrons are freely movable, and that this is the cause 

 of their conductivity. There is some reason to believe 

 that in this case also it is the negative electron which is 

 most freely movable. Some most interesting calculations 

 have been made upon this hypothesis, in which it has 

 been supposed that there was something like a gaseous 

 pressure of these mobile electrons in the metal. Thermo- 

 electric effects have been attributed to the dependence of 

 this pressure upon temperature, and the convection of 

 heat accompanying electric currents has been attributed 

 to the convection of energy of irregular motion by these 

 electrons. The Hall effect has also been shown to be a 

 possible consequence of a different mobility of the positive 

 and negative electrons. 



Upon these principles it is natural to attribute the 

 magnetic properties of iron and other substances to elec- 

 trons describing orbits round the atoms. These revolving 

 electrons, in this case, represent the amperean atomic 

 currents to which magnetisation has long been attributed. 

 A remarkable confirmation of this has been derived from 

 the Zeeman effect, which can be explained by the sup- 

 position that negative electrons are describing orbits 

 round the atoms. Further, the mass that moves with 

 these electrons has been shown to be of the same order 

 of magnitude as the 500th part of the mass of an atom 

 of hydrogen, which, from experiments on gaseous electron- 

 isation, seems to accompany the free electrons in a gas 

 when it conducts. 



There seems to be some reason to think that in a 

 highly magnetisable material, such as iron, either there 

 are more than the four electrons corresponding to its 

 atomicity in rotation, or else that these are rotating very 

 much more rapidly than corresponds to the vibrations of 

 ordinary light. Some objection may be taken to the 

 latter hypothesis from the difficulty of explaining why 

 enormously rapid ether waves are not thereby generated 

 m the surrounding medium, and the energy of the motion 

 thereby lost by radiation. There are suggested ex- 

 planations of this difficulty, but the other hypothesis, that 

 matter has in it many more electrons than correspond to 

 its atomicity, and that these latter are merely peculiar in 

 being removable, agrees with a very interesting suggestion 

 that all matter is built up of electrons. That an atom of 

 hydrogen, for example, consists of some 500 electrons, one 

 of oxygen of some 8000, and so forth. This is a natural 

 deduction from these speculations, and receives some 

 confirmation from its being consistent with the change 

 in dimensions of a body as it moves in different directions 

 through the ether which has been assumed in order to 

 explain the experiment on the motion of the earth 

 through the ether, which Michelson and Morley conducted. 

 A supposition such as this naturally suggests that atoms 

 could be built up of electrons as well as the electrons 

 separated from matter ; and if that be so, there seems no 

 impossibility in the dreams of the alchemist, and an 

 element of one kind may some day be transmitted into 

 that of another. What is as yet known is, however, a 

 very slender foundation for these speculations, and it is 

 quite likely that matter and electricity are distinct in 

 kind, and cannot be transmuted into one another in the 

 way suggested. 



Enough has been said in this very sketchy description 

 of ionic theory to show how far-reaching it is ; how it 

 touches upon the confines of our knowledge and upon 

 the borderland between physics and chemistry. Advances 

 in our knowledge of ionic theory are likely to dispel many 

 of the clouds surrounding the connection of matter and 

 ether, and may lay the foundations for an intelligible 

 structure of the physical universe. G. F. F. G. 



NO. 161 3, VOL. 62] 



THE RECENT CRETAN DISCOVERIES AND 

 THEIR BEARING ON THE EARL V CUL- 

 TURE AND ETHNOGRAPHY OF THE 

 EAST MEDITERRANEAN BASIN. 



VyHILE recently excavating the prehistoric Palace of 

 ^ * Knossos, which lies in the great central gap be- 

 tween the higher ranges of Crete, mid-way between the 

 peaks of Ida and Dicta, I was much struck by the 

 almost continuous dualistic style of the elements. But 

 in this case the "eternal struggle" was not between 

 East and West. It was North and South that here fought 

 it out. The boreal blasts which have collected from the 

 steppes of Eastern Europe sweep almost unopposed 

 across the yEgean, and find their first obstacle in the 

 long mountain wall of Crete. They pour through the 

 central gap. Not unopposed, however ; they are beaten 

 back, and their place triumphantly taken for weeks at a 

 time, by the parching South wind — the Notios of the 

 Cretan natives— which is really the Khamsin of the 

 Libyan Desert. Owing to the fact that the shoot and 

 dumping-ground of the excavations was, perforce, at the 

 southern end, the works were interrupted for days at a 

 time by an overwhelming dust-cloud due to this cause, 

 for the Khamsin seems to have an affinity for dust out 

 of proportion to its actual strength. Disagreeable, how- 

 ever, as were these hindrances to the work of the spade, 

 one had at least leisure to reflect on the historic lessons 

 supplied by these natural phenomena. Crete certainly 

 stands geographically in closer relation to Asia Minor 

 than it does to Africa. Carpathos and Rhodes, not to 

 speak of minor islands, afford natural stepping-stones of 

 intercourse. The actual relations between Crete and 

 Anatolia, ethnic and other, must not be underrated. 

 Yet in a broad historic point of view Crete stands apart 

 from it. It was not like Cyprus, which, although at 

 different times it has become an outpost of Egypt and 

 of Europe, has always remained essentially a part of 

 Western Asia. But the main currents of Cretan history, 

 like those of its two prevalent winds, have been Northern 

 and Southern — European and African. Of its two direct 

 geographical connections, that with Greece and that with 

 Anatolia, it has consistently held to the former. On the 

 other hand, its intercourse with the opposite Libyan 

 coast— the Cyrenaica — and with Egypt has been singu- 

 larly continuous from a very remote period. And in 

 this lies the high importance of the part played by the 

 island in the early history of European culture. Germs 

 received here from the Nile Valley and its borderlands, 

 at a time when the greater part of Europe was still in 

 its Stone Age, were propagated northwards and west- 

 wards, and seedlings hence derived spread in prehistoric 

 times, and by more than one channel, as far as the 

 British islands. 



During five successive campaigns of preliminary 

 exploration in Crete, I was able to collect a variety of 

 evidence establishing the very early derivation of certain 

 indigenous forms of stone vases and decorative motives 

 from those of Egypt. A series of archaic Cretan seals 

 exhibited designs copied almost directly from those of 

 Twelfth Dynasty scarabs, and approximately dating, there- 

 fore, from the middle of the third millennium before our 

 era, while steatite vases were found almost indistinguish- 

 able in form from Old Empire types of considerably 

 earlier date. The primitive three-sided seal-stones, on 

 which appear the first rudiments of Cretan script, repro- 

 duce the type of a three-sided seal, apparently of Libyan 

 origin, which, from its analogy with a special class of 

 Egyptian cylinders, approximately date from the middle 

 of the fourth millennium B.C. So long, however, as the 

 early archaeological strata of the Cyrenaica are left as at 

 present wholly unexplored, a great blank is still left in 

 the materials for comparison on the Libyan side. It 



