88 JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS. 
the rings of whirling ether would stiffen out and exhibit all the 
properties matter was known to possess, and if the medium 
were frictionless the rings would be indestructable, thus reduc- 
ing matter and ether to a single substance. 
Experimental vortex rings of salammoniac vapor were 
here produced to visibly illustrate this. The vortex theory has 
now found favor with physicists, because it had the virtue of 
simplicity and offers facilities for explaining certain peculiari- 
ties of behavior of ether and matter not otherwise at present 
explained. Such peculiarities were elasticity, energy of mo- 
tion, and possibly gravitation and inertia, as well as conserva- 
tion of energy and the dissipation of energy. 
she trend of thought among observational astronomers is 
to regard the visible universe as limited in extent rather than 
infinite, as indicated by the remarks of Mr. Isaac Roberts be- 
fore the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 
Belfast a few days ago. If a limit were set to the ether en- 
velope of the universe, and a runaway star were to dash against 
it from the inside, the star would be hurled back as from a cata- 
pult, and if a man were to attempt to thrust his arm through 
the envelope into blank space beyond, the strained ether surface 
would be found to be harder than a stone wall. If vertical mo- 
tion in a tangled ring were sufficient to produce a vacuum in 
the ether of considerable size it would glisten like silver in the 
light because of reflections from the surface, and if struck with 
a hammer it would offer resistance greater than steel to the 
blow, nothing in this case appearing harder than something. It 
was stated that the available aperture for light in the human eye 
was about one-fifth of an inch, with a focus of one inch. The 
new glass for the Paris Observatory will have an aperture of 
five feet, and an eauivolent focus of 50,000 inches. This opti- 
cal power, if regarded as an eye placed in a being, built on the 
same plan as man, in like proportions, would require a head 
about six miles broad to contain it, and a body totalling sixty 
miles in height and weighing a million tons, whose bulk, 
if converted into anthracite coal at present value of $10 per ton 
would represent a being worth ten times that many million dol- 
