Dolbear.] 
190 
[Jan. 21, 
it with the fingers while it is vibrating. The field of a vibrating 
Chladni plate will cause a body to move towards the plate, or 
make a paper wind-mill to go round and round. We may assume 
then that a vibrating body that can give up its energy to the me- 
dium about it reduces the pressure about itself by its own motions, 
and hence has a field the shape of which will be determined by its 
own form as well as by its harmonic rates and amplitudes, that is 
its timbre and this is the idea to be applied to atoms as an explana- 
tion of the phenomenon of chemism. There is to be explained 
not only the mutual attraction of atoms, but their selective at- 
tractions, the nascent state, dissociation, as well as the crystalline 
and colloid states and cohesion in general. 
We are prepared to consider the effects of the vibrating atom in 
the diagram, upon the medium about it, the ether. That an ex- 
change of energy is going on there can be no doubt, at all tem- 
peratures above absolute zero. Provost’s law asserts that for all 
atoms. A field therefore might be anticipated and if we have the 
form that of a ring and the vibration the fundamental one the field 
must be shaped something 
like this fig. 3. At the four 
nodes where the motion is 
least the change in pressure 
will be least and therefore 
the normal state will come 
more closely to the atom. 1 
Suppose now that another 
atom at absolute zero should 
come within that field, (as 
at 6, Fig. 3) it would be 
subject to a greater pressure fig. 3. 
on its side that is more remote than on the side adjacent to the 
other atom and would therefore be pushed towards the latter 
until it touched it. If it touched where the amplitude of vibra- 
tion was greatest it would doubtless be bounced away only to return 
again, but it would ultimately be tossed until it came to anode 
when it would remain quiescent, the two adhering because pressed 
together. 
v In the absence of experimental proof that the vibrations of the atoms produce such 
a change in the stress in the ether about them, it is important to bear in mind that the 
antecedent condition which is known is, that the vibrating atoms are imparting energy 
to the ether in some way, and second that all the anoiogies we have point to such a 
field as is here described. 
