| Description | Stoney gives thanks for Larmor's [British Association] Presidential address and paper from Bradford. They will need a lifetime to assimilate. Everything in nature must consist of motions, he muses, resulting in practical questions, such as what is an electron, and what is an electric charge. If a singular point in a field of motion, then what is this motion? Nothing can exist which cannot be analysed into motions, including the time and space relations in which motions stand to one another. He refers Larmor to an article on the Leonids, noting that Larmor uses an illustration of meteor streams in one of his papers. Stoney is sorry that [George Hartley] Bryan's paper is going into the Philosophical Transactions, giving his reasons. He draws Larmor's attention to a paper by [Willem Henri] Julius in the Astrophysical Journal. Stoney describes an experiment he conducted, throwing an image of the Sun on a Roland's grating, producing an ordinary reflection and attendant spectra of 'great splendour'. He has several microscope and telescope experiments which he thinks will interest Larmor, if he can visit. |