1904 - 5 .] Mr J. Fraser on Electricity based on Bubble Atom. 685 
to send it, out from them in a continuous spray or rain in every 
direction. This may he realised by supposing a drum of a cage- 
like structure to he revolving very fast under a shower of hail. 
The hail striking against the bars of the cage-work would be 
scattered more and more violently the quicker the drum revolved ; 
and, indeed, if it revolved very fast it would be dangerous to eyes 
and face to stand near such a piece of machinery. I do not mean 
to suggest that the ether would be scattered in the same way as 
the hail, because I believe the ether to be too densely packed for 
any such scattering, but there would be stresses set up in it 
radiating outwards from the atoms in every direction. These 
stresses I take to be the “Lines of Force” in electricity. When 
the stresses at any point were equal in every direction there would 
be equilibrium, and the condition of things at that point would 
be in what is known as the “ Neutral State.” 
6. Now the larger the atoms the greater the disturbance their 
particles would cause in the ether, or the greater their electricity , 
as I propose to call it after this. In fact, this disturbance, or their 
electricity, would, other things being equal, be precisely propor- 
tional to the square and their total energy to the cube of their 
radii. I think this may be readily seen when we consider that the 
work required to produce a vacuum in the ether, or the atmos- 
phere, is proportional to the cubical space out of which the ether 
or the atmosphere has been emptied ; and after the vacuum has 
been produced to keep it intact, a force at least equal to that which 
produced it must be continually exerted. In the case of our atoms, 
to double the radius of any one of them the speed of its particles 
would have to be increased in such a way that their total energy 
was increased by an amount equal to the work done upon the sur- 
rounding ether in clearing it out from the additional space now 
occupied by the atom. Thus the total energy of the particles of 
the atom is increased in proportion to the change of bulk, while 
at the same time the surrounding medium is further energised by 
an equal amount. Thus total energy is proportional to change of 
bulk and electrification to change of surface area. 
It would be as though the motion, or energy, which existed in 
the ether which had previously occupied the interior of the 
atom was now wholly located on the exterior, or surface. (It 
