Ill INFLUENCE OF MOTION ON VARIOUS PHENOMENA OTWITHSTANDING its genuine physical nature and properties, the etheris singularly intangible and inaccessible to our senses, and ac- cordingly is a subject on which it is extremely difficult to try experiments. Many have been the attempts to detect some phenomena de- pending on its motion relative to the earth. The earth is travelling round the sun at the rate of 19 miles a second, and although this is slow compared with light—being, in fact, just about goxth of the speed of light—yet it would seem feasible to observe some modification of optical phenomena due to this motion through the ether. And one such phenomenon is indeed known —namely, the stellar aberration discovered by Bradley in 1729. The position of objects not on the earth, and not connected with the solar system, is apparently altered by an amount comparable to one part in ten thousand, by the earth's motion; that is to say, the apparent place 30