May ioth, 192 1.] Proceedings. xxiiu 



15 he had lessons from John Dalton. Professor Gee exhibited a 

 ledger showing Dalton's method of recording the attendance of 

 his pupils, with his fees based on a cost of 2s. 6d. per lesson. 

 John Edward became a member in 1828, and his son, also a 

 John Edward, who edited the Guardian from 1861 to 1871, was 

 elected in 1856. Five of the early reformers connected with the 

 " Manchester Constitutional Society," whose names are given 

 by Mr. Mills, were members of the Literary and Philosophical 

 Society. J. C. Dyer, a Vice-President of this Society, was one 

 of the promoters of the Guardian. His remarkable history is 

 given by Angus Smith in the centenary volume. 



Mr. C. L. Barnes, M.A., quoted from a letter in Nature of 

 April 28th, referring to the effect of a high-speed propeller in 

 attracting gnats, though at first there were none to be seen. 

 They were killed in large numbers by the blades, which were 

 afterwards found to be stained with their blood. A similar 

 observation was recorded by the late Sir Hiram Maxim, who 

 observed that the drone of a dynamo drew mosquitoes to the 

 instrument. Allusion was also made to Isaiah, vii, 18, where 

 the words " the Lord shall hiss for the fly . . « . and for the 

 bee," seem to point to an early knowledge of the phenomenon. 



Mr. C. E. Stromeyer, O.B.E-, Mem.Inst.CE., read a paper 

 entitled " The Lorentz-Einstein Relativity." 



Leaning on nis previous paper the author admitted the 

 possibility of time and space having secondary characteristics 

 as claimed by relativitists. But he disputed their claim to 

 be able to evolve these secondary characteristics by Euclidean 

 methods out of Euclidean space and time. He subjected 

 Einstein's rendering of Lorentz's mathematics to a searching 

 analysis and pointed out that the results were obtained by the 

 fairly frequent introduction of the expression nought divided 

 by nought which is the mathematical way of writing this is an 

 unknown quantity. Starting from any suitable imaginary 

 proposition, for instance that no velocity can exceed that of 

 light, the author showed in a few lines how to evolve the 

 desired relatively correction formulas, but pointed out that they 

 have no more reality than the imaginary proposition. In 

 conclusion he suggested that all our difficulties would vanish 

 if we would admit that, whether there be an ether or not, 

 whether it be solid or gaseous, each atomic source of light or 

 heat, light and heat being electric phenomena, surrounds itself 

 many billion times per second with electric fields which partake 

 of its movements, in the same wa}^ as the infinitely great 

 magnetic fields which surround a wire carrying an electric 

 current partake of the movements of that wire. 



