ON THE PHYSICAL VIKW OF NATUHK. 191 



osophers, revealed u huge unay ul' sliange and sUirtling 

 phenomena, whicli have latterly been brought somewhat 

 into line and order by the researches of Prof. J. J. Tliom- 

 son/ of Cambridge. A great many half-forgotten facts 

 and experiments, wliich did not fit into the regular pro- 

 gramme of electrical science or practice as it had Ijeen 

 elaborated by the older doctrine of Couloml) and Weber 

 on the one side, or by the more modern of Faraday and 

 Maxwell on the other, were collected and shown to 

 throw (juite a new light on the processes of radiation 

 and electrification, and on the relations of the atoms of 

 ponderable matter to the vacuum, now looked upon as 

 filled with a continuous substance, viz., the ether. The 

 older views of the two electricities, brought before 

 the eye by the celebrated figures of Lichtenberg ; - 

 many isolated facts connected with the electric spark 

 and statical electricity, such as were collected by Kiess 

 seventy years ago, or demonstrated in the hydro-electric 

 machine of Armstrong ; theories, many times abandoned 



' Impressed with tlie importance otiiers as well as of their own by 



which attaches to the plienomena in Klster and (Jeitel, will be found in 



question for a further development the ' Annalen der Phj'sik' (1889), 



of tlie theory of electricity founded i vol. xxxvii. p. 315 sqq. 



by Faraday and Maxwell, Prof. J. J. I - Whilst the diHerence.s Vjetween 



Thomson, in his ' Researches,' jiub- the discharges from the j)ositive and 



lished in 1893 as a sequel to Max- negative terminals, after having 



well's great treatise, devoted a for a long time been looked ujion 



long cha[)ter to " The Passage of , as isolated curiosities of electrical 



Electricity through Oases." His science, were being taken up and 



own celebrated contributions to ; studied in connection with the 



this subject, after having been . subject here referred to (see J. J. 



published in the 'Philosophical Thomson, ' Researches,' p. 172 577. ), 



Magazine,' and brought before the Lord Armstrong, during the jwst 



Dover meeting of tlie British As- ten years of his long and eventful 



sociation in 1899, are now summar- life, carried on a scries of e.\i>eri- 



ised in his lectures on "The Dis- ; ments on a large scjilc, and with 



chargeof Electricity through Oases" verj- jjowerful si>ccially designed 



(1898). A very interesting earlier apf)aratuH, on 'Electrical Discliarge 



summary of the researches of in Air and Water ' (ISS.'i). 



