Certainly the
vibrations flow through solid glass and most solid diamond. To be
sure, they are a little hampered by the solid substance. The speed of
light is reduced from one hundred and eighty thousand miles a second in
space to one hundred and twenty thousand in glass. If ether can so
readily go through such solids, no wonder that a spirit body could
appear to the disciples, "the doors being shut."
Marvelous discoveries in the capacities of ether have been made lately.
In 1842 Joseph Henry found that electric waves in the top of his house
provoked action in a wire circuit in the cellar, through two floors and
ceilings, without wire connections. More than twenty years ago
Professor Loomis, of the United States coast survey, telegraphed twenty
miles between mountains by electric impulses sent from kites. Last
year Mr. Preece, the cable being broken, sent, without wires, one
hundred and fifty-six messages between the mainland and the island of
Mull, a distance of four and a half miles. Marconi, an Italian, has
sent recognizable signals through seven or eight thick walls of the
London post-office, and three fourths of a mile through a hill.
Jagadis Chunder Bose, of India, has fired a pistol by an electric
vibration seventy-five feet away and through more than four feet of
masonry. Since brick does not elastically vibrate to such
infinitesimal impulses as electric waves, ether must.
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