Now we see a coming together of what, at first sight,
seem the most widely separated spheres of activity. What two
branches could be more widely separated than that of stellar
statistics, embracing the whole universe within its scope, and the
study of these newly discovered emanations, the product of our
laboratories, which seem to show the existence of corpuscles
smaller than the atoms of matter? And yet, the phenomena which we
have reviewed, especially the relation of terrestrial magnetism to
the solar activity, and the formation of nebulous masses around
the new stars, can be accounted for only by emanations or forms of
force, having probably some similarity with the corpuscles,
electrons, and rays which we are now producing in our
laboratories. The nineteenth century, in passing away, points with
pride to what it has done. It has become a word to symbolize what
is most important in human progress Yet, perhaps its greatest
glory may prove to be that the last thing it did was to lay a
foundation for the physical science of the twentieth century. What
shall be discovered in the new fields is, at present, as far
without our ken as were the modern developments of electricity
without the ken of the investigators of one hundred years ago.
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