polarized: that is, the motion of a ray, instead of being a simple undulatory movement, was now made to assume such a motion as the water from a garden-hose has when the nozzle is swung round in a circle while the water is escaping from it. After reading the account of it, it occurred to me that the converse experiment might be tried; that is to say, the effect of a circularly polarized beam of light upon a piece of steel. By concentrating a large beam of ordinary plane polarized light with a quartz lens, and passing it through a quarter wave-plate at the proper angle, a powerful beam of circularly polarized light was obtained. At the focus of this beam a fine cambric needle without magnetism was placed so that the light passed it longitudinally. Ten minutes' exposure was sufficient to make it decidedly magnetic. Hence I infer that the motions which we call magnetic attractions and repulsions may be quite analogous to such helical motions; also, that these motions exist in ether, and evidently may be either right-handed or left-handed. Wind up on a pencil a piece of wire twelve or fifteen inches long, making a loose spiral. Bring the two ends of the spiral together; and note first that one is twisted to the right, the other to the left. If they be twisted into each other, they will advance very easily; but if a right-handed spiral were to be interlocked with another like it, and both turned in the direction of their spiral, they would separate rapidly. Applying this conception to a magnet, we might suppose that such spiral motions will be set up in the ether by the magnet, and that such motions re-acting upon ordinary matter affect it as attraction and repulsion; and thus we should have at least a conceivable mechanical explanation of the phenomenon. [Illustration: FIG. 5.] There are numberless experiments which might be given to further exhibit the relation of mass motion to magnetism, but a single one more must suffice. No rotation of a magnet upon its own axis can produce any effects upon a current that is exterior to it; but if a loop of wire be kept stationary adjacent to a magnet, as in Fig. 5, while the magnet revolves, a current of electricity is produced; and if the magnet be kept stationary, and the loop revolves, a current will also be produced, but in the opposite direction. Here, as in all the other cases, no electricity is originated, save when motion is imparted to one or other of the parts. This experiment is due to Faraday. From all these cases we can come to but one conclusion, that both electricity and magnetism are but forms of motion; electricity being a form of motion in ordinary matter, for it cannot be made to pass through a vacuum, while magnetism must be a form of motion induced in the ether, for it is as effective in a vacuum as out of it; electricity always needing some material conductor, magnetism needing no more than do radiant heat and light. VELOCITY.