1894.] 1^5 [Bache. 



smooth lakelet had been only a short time before my arrival at the 

 place in precisely the same state of agitation as the surrounding 

 waters. The surface is the part where the wave begins to form, 

 and where it receives constant increments, the wind propagating 

 these, and by impact on the growing wave or billow as a whole, 

 forming and propelling it as a mass, despite its tendency in deep 

 water to oscillate freely in the vertical without translation horizon- 

 tally. It is easily conceivable that, although particles of oil may, 

 as I have stated, experience no sensible friction when in contact 

 with the molecular movements of water, so almost infinitesimal are 

 they in range, yet that oil forming a film over a large surface of 

 water may, through friction, as an enclosing sheath, tend to quiet 

 the water, and thus impair and gradually destroy its ability to con- 

 tinue the massed effect known as a wave, at the place, the surface, 

 where not only is it generated, but where it most effectively tends 

 to preserve its energy of movement. 



Thus, it is not only through its weight that water, when set in 

 active motion, becomes so formidable as we know it to be when in 

 angry mood. It is because, besides the momentum with which it 

 can be endowed through its great weight, it lends itself, through its 

 molecular constitution, to the storage of enormous energy and to the 

 yielding up of that energy reluctantly. Assuming the existence of 

 a sea of oil or one of alcohol, and either in a state of turbulence, 

 and moreover eliminating in imagination the difference in weight 

 between these and water, either in comparison with water equally 

 turbulent would gently come to rest. 



The difference between Herr Wiener's view and mine is radical. 

 He speaks of the motion common to fluids as the cause of the 

 brownian movements. But such motion, at least as perceptible 

 through the microscope, does not exist, except in water or in some 

 other liquid in which water is, as I have proved by experiment, a 

 considerable constituent. Then Herr Wiener, although accounting 

 for the brownian movements by hypothetical movements common 

 to all fluids, really makes their causation the vibratory effect of rays 

 of light and heat, to which, he thinks, fluids through their consti- 

 tution lend themselves. I, on the contrary, show that the molecu- 

 lar motion, called brownian, taking place under all conditions 

 imposable, is a property of water and of water only, and that light 

 and heat have naught to do with producing it, although, as I have 

 admitted, they may possibly act in intensifying it. All that I may 



PROC. AMER. PHILOS. SOC. XXXIII. 145. W. TKINTED MAY 26, 1894. 



