nd no transforming change can
take place in the absence of matter. The ether is helpless.

13. MATTER IS ELASTIC.

It is commonly stated that certain substances, like putty and dough, are
inelastic, while some other substances, like glass, steel, and wood, are
elastic. This quality of elasticity, as manifested in such different
degrees, depends upon molecular combinations; some of which, as in glass
and steel, are favourable for exhibiting it, while others mask it, for
the ultimate atoms of all kinds are certainly highly elastic.

The measure of elasticity in a mass of matter is the velocity with which
a wave-motion will be transmitted through it. Thus the elasticity of the
air determines the velocity of sound in it. If the air be heated, the
elasticity is increased and the sound moves faster. The rates of such
sound-conduction range from a few feet in a second to about 16,000, five
times swifter than a cannon ball. In such elastic bodies as vibrate to
and fro like the prongs of a tuning-fork, or give sounds of a definite
pitch, the rate of vibration is determined by the size and shape of the
body as well as by their elementary composition. The smaller a body is,
the higher its vibratory rate, if it be made of the same material and
the form remains the same. Thus a tuning-fork, that may be carried in
the waistcoat-pocket, may vibrate 500 times a second. If it were only
the fifty-millionth of an inch in size, but of the same material and
form, it would vibrate 30,000,000000 times a second; and if it were made
of ether, instead of steel, it would vibrate as many times faster as the
velocity of waves in the ether is greater than it is in steel, and would
be as many as 400,000000,000000 times per second. The amount of
displacement, or the amplitude of vibration, with the pocket-fork might
be no more than the hundredth of an inch, and this rate measured as
translation velocity would be but five inches per second. If the fork
were of atomic magnitude, and should swing its sides one half the
diameter of the atom, or say the hundred-millionth of an inch, the
translational velocity would be equivalent to about eighty miles a
second, or a hundred and fifty times the velocity of a cannon ball,
which may be reckoned at about 3000 feet.

That atoms really vibrate at the above rate per second is very certain,
for their vibrations produce ether-waves the length of which may be
accurately measured. When a tuning-fork vibrates 500