August 31, 1900.] 



SCIENCE. 



325 



Charles Lawrence Sargent : Alloys of Tungsten and 

 of Molybdemim obtained in the Electric Furnace. 



Charles Hugh Shaw : A Comparative Study of the 

 flowers of Pohjgala polygama and P. pauoiflora, with a 

 Discussion of Cleistogamy. 



Albert Duncan Yocum : An Inquiry into the 

 Fundamental Processes of Addition and Subtraction. 

 Columbian Univeesity. 



Eugene Byrnes : Experiments on the direct Conver- 

 sion of the Energy of Carbon into Electrical Energy. 



Charles Eussel Ely : Investigation of Phenomenon 

 of Deliquescence and of the Capacity of Salts to at- 

 tract Water Vapor. 



Ernestine Fireman : The Action of Phosponium 

 Iodide on Tetra and Penta Chlorides. 



TJNivEESirY OF California. 

 "Walter Charles Blasdale : A Chemical Study of the 

 Indument found on the FrondsJ of Gymnogramme 

 triangularis. 



Beyn Mawb College. 

 Florence Peebles : Experiments in Regeneration 

 and in Grafting of Hydrozoa. 



Univeesity op Michigan. 

 Eugene Cyrus Woodruff : The Effects of Temper- 

 ature on the Tuning Fork. 



University of Minnesota. 

 Bruce Fink : Contributions to a Knowledge of the 

 Lichens of Minnesota. 



University of Nebraska. 

 Charles Fordyce : The Cladooera of Nebraska. 



Princeton University. 

 Henry Norris Russell : The General Perturbations 

 of the Major Areis of Eros caused by the Action of 

 Mars ; with the corresponding Terms in the Mean 

 Longitude. 



"Vanderbilt University. 

 J. Magruder Sullivan : Coal Tar Pitch and its 

 High-boiling Fractions and Residue. 



University of Wisconsin. 

 Carl Edward Magnusson : The Anomalous Disper- 

 sion of Cyanin. 



INERTIA AND GRAVITATION. 

 It was shown by J. J. Thomson (' Effects 

 produced by the Motion of Electrified 

 Bodies,' Phil. Mag., April, 1881), that a 

 charged body has more inertia than an un- 

 charged one.* 



* The formula there given contains a slight slip in 

 the numerical coefficient, as was first pointed out by 

 Heaviside. J should be written for •^■^. 



In 1890* and 1891 f the writer intro- 

 duced, for the first time, the conception 

 that it was not only, as in the electrochem- 

 ical theories of Davy, Berzelius, Helmholtz, 

 and others, atoms in chemical combination 

 or the dissociated components of a mole- 

 cule, which had charges ; but that all atoms, 

 even in such substances as metallic copper 

 and silver, possessed charges, and that the 

 so-called neutral atoms were not devoid of 

 charges, ' but had equal quantities of both 

 kinds of electricity.' 



For practically a year it was found im- 

 possible to secure publication of this theory, 

 the two principal objections which the edi- 

 tors to whom it was sent made to it being 

 that in the first place it was a fundamental 

 fact that all electric charges must reside 

 on the outside of conductors, and that 

 consequently the atoms of a conductor, 

 such as copper, could not possibly have in- 

 dividual charges, and secondly that 'the 

 atoms,being self- evidently conductors them- 

 selves, or else the metal as a whole could 

 not conduct,' the postulated equal charges 

 on the atoms would immediately neutralize 

 each other. A brief note was finally pub- 

 lished by the kindness of the editor of the 

 Electrical World in that paper, J but ac- 

 companied with an editorial to the efifect 

 that though the numerical relations con- 

 necting the elastic constants with atomic 

 volume, discovered by the writer and ad- 

 duced as proof of the theory, were no doubt 

 interesting, the theory was probably wrong, 

 and the efforts due ' to intermolecular forces 

 just about sufficient to account for the par- 

 ticular sort of strain which we know as an 

 electric charge.' 



The above is not mentioned for the pur- 

 pose of discrediting the judgment of the 

 editors referred to, for when even specialists 

 did not, at a much later date, see that it 

 could be reconciled with the physical facts, 



* Lecture, Elect. Soo. , Newark, May, 1890. 

 ^Elec. World., Aug. 8 and Aug. 22, 1891. 



