after the model of a viscous solid would always contain the viscous terms, so that even for the high time-rates of light-waves there would be dissipation however small. Such a condition, it can be proven, would give coloration to the remote members of the stellar system; a fact inconsistent with observation. On the other hand, a soft vesicular solid like gelatine may not necessarily contain the time-factor, and yet be so soft that dislocation may occur even with constraints of the order of aberration, but not of the square of that order. Such an ether without a time of relaxation factor would fulfill completely the conditions of a luminiferous ether, if, as Stokes tried to show, it could be reconciled with the phenomena of aberration and the motions of the heavenly bodies. The method of double refraction shows that a solution of gelatine of one part in a thousand is rigid, while at the same time it appears as mobile as water, and its rate of flow through small tubes does not vary largely from the same. This experiment illustrates very markedly Stokes's example. When such a solution is continuously dislocated between two surfaces in relative motion, the same double refraction is present, indicating that the stress is still active during dislocation. Also a metal, like copper, shows a similar stress while being strained beyond its elastic limit. If this takes place by slip or dislocation throughout the mass which, though irregular, may give a mean uniformity for sensible dimensions, such a medium might serve as our model. Any deviation from perfect regularity in molecular distribution and activity we might anticipate would give such minute irregular dislocations at the limit of elasticity. Such a medium would thus transmit completely any disturbance within this strain limit.
It is difficult, however, to conceive of the transmissions of a disturbance across a surface of dislocation. For many ordinary media, we should expect at such a surface total reflection. If we suppose such a transmission of disturbance, its mode is not apparent, even if we suppose a thin lamina in rotational motion which would diffuse at least a portion, if not all, of the incident disturbance. Similar difficulties would arise if we assume the ether a solid which becomes fluid under stress and thus allows bodies to pass through it (as, for example, through a block of ice, as Fitzgerald suggested). While such solutions may seem highly artificial and do violence to our convictions, the consequences of a quiescent ether may, when fully developed and tested, demonstrate its impossibility and command a more extended examination into the structural qualities of an allsufficient medium than the single case of an essentially vesicular medium like jelly brought forward by Stokes and in a different form as a contractile ether by Kelvin. The theory of Fresnel of a quiescent ether in space presupposes a change of its density proportional to μ² within a ponderable medium, and a convection coefficient
