As electric currents have free paths of motion even among the atoms of matter, these ions or corpuscles must be one form of electricity and must be both positive and negative, though the negative ions attract the most attention. I am glad to find science coming to my conclusions as to the fourth state of matter. But instead of calling it electric ions, electrons or Thomson corpuscles, it should be named electro-magnetic ether. It may be that science has at last discovered what electricity is, and that it consists of these infinitesimal corpuscles. Prof. Blake says: "These ions or corpuscles shatter into charged gases the molecules of gases and ionize the gases and make them conductors of electricity; they raise gases to incandescence and make them light-giving sources; they form nuclei about which matter will aggregate and condense; they seem to explain some of the most stupendous and perplexing problems in cosmic physics--such as the cause of the sun's corona, the spread of the comet's tail, the source of the meteors, the fantastic play of the auroras, whence the electric displays of our atmosphere, the after-glow of the setting sun, and the why of the zodiacal light." He says the corpuscles seem to be solving the big problems of the heavens, and adds: "The corpuscles become luminous when impinged upon by electric waves; and waves of light, which are electro-magnetic disturbances, must move them, and light will be produced and be scattered in all directions as if reflected from minute particles of ordinary matter. This may account for the glow of the nebulae, and the zodiacal light. These corpuscles, being admitted into the moist air of our earth, form nuclei of condensation and drops are formed; and the growth of the high, fleecy clouds finds its beginning around these corpuscles. They also strike our equatorial region; there they are influenced by the earth's magnetic forces and deflected towards the poles, and near the poles they reach gases dense enough to become luminous by their impact and show the fantastic colorings of the aurora. "Our atmosphere lies, then, like a great insulating sheet between conducting layers--the surface of the ocean and the upper air. In the ether of this intermediate insulating region electric waves may be set up to be propagated as signals in straight lines in all directions. When wireless telegraphy first reached out timidly into space, we all said its currents would leave the earth's surface within a short distance, for they went out from the earth's surface in straight lines; but as they extended farther and farther they seemed to bend around the earth and to follow its curvature. Hertz, who discovered the electric waves which Marconi now so successfully uses in wireless telegraphy, showed us in 1887 that conductors reflected these waves, and the ocean's surface sent them back when they impinged upon it.