energy
stored in the pound of carbon, but hardly more. Go on, go on, and
bring it so cheap as to reach the humblest dwelling when you shall
celebrate the centennial of the opening of your new station.

"I do most sincerely regret that I cannot be with you in the flesh. I
am, like Ixion of old, confined to a wheel (chair in my case), cannot
walk, cannot even stand; hence, owing to the impairment of my
understanding (???), I must wish you all the enjoyments of the
evening, and gladly content myself that you have made so much
possible.

"Very truly yours, MOSES G. FARMER."

* * * * *

THE MODERN THEORY OF LIGHT.[1]

[Footnote 1: Being the general substance of a lecture to the
Ashmolean Society in the University of Oxford, on Monday, June
3, 1889. [Reprinted from the _Liverpool University College
Magazine_.]]

By Prof. OLIVER LODGE.

To persons occupied in other branches of learning, and not directly
engaged in the study of physical science, some rumor must probably
have traveled of the stir and activity manifest at the present time
among the votaries of that department of knowledge.

It may serve a useful purpose if I try and explain to outsiders what
this stir is mainly about, and why it exists. There is a proximate and
there is an ultimate cause. The proximate cause is certain experiments
exhibiting in a marked and easily recognizable way the already
theoretically predicted connection between electricity and light. The
ultimate cause is that we begin to feel inklings and foretastes of
theories, wider than that of gravitation, more fundamental than any
theories which have yet been advanced; theories which if successfully
worked out will carry the banner of physical science far into the dark
continent of metaphysics, and will illuminate with a clear philosophy
much that is at present only dimly guessed. More explicitly, we begin
to perceive chinks of insight into the natures of electricity, of
ether, of elasticity, and even of matter itself. We begin to have a
kinetic theory of the physical universe.

We are living, not in a Newtonian, but at the beginning of a perhaps
still greater Thomsonian era. Greater, not because any one man is
probably greater than Newton,[2] but because of the stupendousness of
the problems now waiting to be solved. There are a dozen men of great
magnitude, either now living or but recently deceased, to whom wha