Having thus described the apparatus, which I hope shortly to show you in action, I pass to the information that has been obtained by it. This is contained in a long series of drawings, of which a selection will be presented on the screen. The First Series that I have to show represents the splash of a drop of mercury 0.15 inch in diameter that has fallen 3 inches on to a smooth glass plate. It will be noticed that very soon after the first moment of impact, minute rays are shot out in all directions on the surface. These are afterwards overflowed or united, until, as in Fig. 8, the outline is only slightly rippled. Then (Fig. 9) main rays shoot out, from the ends of which in some cases minute droplets of liquid would split off, to be left lying in a circle on the plate, and visible in all subsequent stages. By counting these droplets when they were thus left, the number of rays was ascertained to have been generally about 24. This exquisite shell-like configuration, shown in Fig. 9, marks about the maximum spread of the liquid, which, subsiding in the middle, afterwards flows into an annulus or rim with a very thin central film, so thin, in fact, as often to tear more or less irregularly. This annular rim then divides or segments (Figs. 14, 15, 16) in such a manner as to join up the rays in pairs, and thus passes into the 12-lobed annulus of Fig. 16. Then the whole contracts, but contracts most rapidly between the lobes, the liquid then being driven into and feeding the arms, which follow more slowly. In Fig. 21 the end of this stage is reached, and now the arms continuing to come in, the liquid rises in the centre; this is, in fact, the beginning of the rebound of the drop from the plate. In the case before us the drops at the ends of the arms now break off (Fig. 25), while the central mass rises in a column which just fails itself to break up into drops, and falls back into the middle of the circle of satellites which, it will be understood, may in some cases again be surrounded by a second circle of the still smaller and more numerous droplets that split off the ends of the rays in Fig. 9. The whole of the 30 stages described are accomplished in about 1/20 second, so that the average interval between them is about 1/600 second. FIRST SERIES. [Illustration: 1] [Illustration: 2] [Illustration: 3] [Illustration: 4] [Illustration: 5] [Illustration: 6] [Illustration: 7] [Illustration: 8] [Illustration: 9] [Illustration: 10] [Illustration: 11] [Illustration: 12] [Illustration: 13] [Illustration: 14] [Illustration: 15] [Illustration: 16] [Illustration: 17] [Illustration: 18] [Illustration: 19] [Illustration: 20] [Illustration: 21] [Illustration: 22] [Illustration: 23] [Illustration: 24] [Illustration: 25] [Illustration: 26] [Illustration: 27] [Illustration: 28] [Illustration: 29] [Illustration: 30]