THE 



LONDON, EDINBURGH, and DUBLIN 



PHILOSOPHICAL MAGAZINE 



AND 



J-OUENAI OF SCIENCE. 



SUPPLEMENT to YOL. XL FILTH SERIES. 



LXIY. TheExistence of the Luminiferous ^Ether. By Ernest 

 H. Cook, B.Sc, Assoc. B.C.Sc, Lecturer upon Experimental 

 Physics at the Bristol Trade and Mining School*. 



IN the number of this Journal for April 1879 there ap- 

 peared a paper with the above title, in which the author 

 endeavoured to show that the assumption of an all-pervading 

 sether in order to account for the phenomena of optics was 

 unnecessary. In place of the aether as the vehicle of wave- 

 motion, ifc was suggested that the particles of matter them- 

 selves possessed the requisite properties,, and were therefore 

 able to take up and transmit the motion producing light. 

 Since that paper was written, however, many advances have 

 been made in the domain of molecular physics. Some of 

 these have a direct, and many more an indirect, bearing on 

 the subject. At the present time, therefore, it may be of in- 

 terest to examine the more important of these researches, and 

 try to glean from them the conclusions to which they lead. 

 In doing this the endeavour will be made to state the case in 

 as fair and impartial a manner as possible. Conclusions 

 will be drawn from a series of facts, and not from isolated 

 ones, and, whenever possible, will be confirmed by indepen- 

 dent experimental evidence. In this way, although we may 

 not be able to arrive at the whole truth (owing to a defi- 

 ciency of experimental evidence), yet we stand the best chance 

 of extracting the greatest amount from the knowledge we do 

 possess. But the examination of the varied phenomena pre- 

 sented to us by the labours of experimental philosophers is a 

 task of such magnitude, that we cannot hope to do more than 

 notice the more important of the researches. Let us then 

 begin with 



* Communicated by the Author. 

 Phil. Mag. S. 5. No. 71. Suppl. Vol. 11. 2 M 



