308 J. Lovering—=State of the Physical Sciences. 
cule of any substance as the smallest mass of that substance which 
retains all its chemical properties, we can start with the extensive 
generalization of Avogadro and Ampére, that the same volume of 
e 
as old as Lue s. He saw the magnified ae a of his — 
esis in the aicees which chase one another in the sunbeam, On 
of the Bernouillis thought that the pressure of gases might be 
caused by the incessant impact of these little masses on the vessel 
which held them. e discovery that heat was a motion and not 
a substance, foreshadowed by Bacon, made probable by Rumford 
d Davy, and ri idly y Mayer and Joule when they ob- 
not compete with it Cla ausius bea the ‘netis cheary 
of gases by his powerful mathematics, and derived from it the ex- 
perimental laws of Mariotte, ass ais ac and Charles. By the 
assumption of data, more or less p ausible, several mathematicians 
eM succeeded in computing the sizes and the masses of the mole- 
and some of the elements of their motion, It. should not 
ers + eae s in relation se the molecules fast certainty which 
fluid. Helmholtz has demonstrated that such vortices possess 4 
perpetuity and - inviolability once thought to be realized only 
by the eternal atoms. e ring-vortices may hustle one another, 
and pass Seana endless niger matey “but they cannot 
broken or stopped. Thomson seized u them as the ge Sage 
ation of the indestructible but laaiee molecule w ich as 
looking seh to a u a condition of P deyeleak science. 
The element of the new physics is not an atom or a congeries of 
atoms, y but a whirling ¥ vapor. The sulacotes of the same abet 
one standard pitch and, when in andeseent. emit the same kind 0 
The music of the sea re left the heavens and conde- 
scended to the rhythmic molecules. There is here no birth oF 
—) or variation of species. other masses than the precige one 
ch represents the elements have been eliminated, where, asks 
Maxwell, goer gps gone? The spectroscope does not show them 
t 
ros 
