Corpuscular Theory

Abstract

HAVING been urged to direct attention to a paper by myself read to the British Association fifty years ago, on a corpuscular-wave-theory of light, founded upon Le Sage's theory of gravity, I sent a letter to NATURE which appeared in the issue of Sept. 8. In that letter I say that, in 1878, the chief difficulty seemed to relate to refraction, and the reduced velocity of light in a dense medium. I ought to have added that the hypothesis that then seemed the most suitable for explaining the diminished velocity of light in dense media is due to the necessary wriggling of ultramundane corpuscles round the atoms, thus lengthening the distance to be traversed, and diminishing the velocity of the wave-front.