Note 71 — PART III.

“Our atmosphere,” says Dr. Hunt, “is not terrestrial, but cosmical, being a universal medium diffused throughout all space, but condensed around the various centres of attraction in amount proportional to their mass and temperature, the waters of the ocean themselves belonging to this universal atmosphere.” (Nature, August 29, 1878, p. 475.) Similar views have been advocated by Mr. Mattieu Williams, who says “that the gaseous ocean, in which we are immersed, is but a portion of the infinite atmosphere that fills the whole solidity of space; that links together all the elements of the universe, and diffuses among them their heat and light, and all the other physical and vital forces which heat and light are capable of generating.” (Fuel of the Sun, p. 5.) In 1854 Sir William Thomson suggested the idea that the luminiferous ether was probably a continuation of our atmosphere, though I do not think he continues to hold that opinion. The first to advance this idea was, undoubtedly, Newton, who assumed interplanetary space to be universally filled with an ethereal medium “much of the same constitution as air, but far rarer, subtler, and more elastic.”