| Description | He cannot explain why periods are fixed, but he has made several suggestions to Larmor, which he has 'snorted at'. If there are forces depending upon velocities then 'all gaseous work goes down with a crash'. Extension in this direction will lead to temperature distribution of energy among the vibrations. Meanwhile there may be another solution: he has called Larmor's attention to Fitzgerald's 'Nature' letter, and the Fourier series analysis of simple motions and Stoney's theory of double lines is practically the same as a perturbed planetary motion. If Fitzgerald was sure that he had originated this idea, he would publish it. He thinks that a good deal has been done about dissociable things carrying electrical discharges; [Arthur] Schuster has tried hard to prove that mercury vapour does not carry a discharge, but Fitzgerald thinks there is a difficulty in purity. Hamilton's dearh must have been a shock, but he does not think it had to do with cold. He describes Joly trying for tension in the electric arc; the theory of this is complex and Fitzgerald notes his own calculation of the action on a mercury filament |