All this makes us think of what is the real carrier of electricity through a partial vacuum, through a gas, or through a substance of any kind whatever, and we can only imagine it to be the ether. In that case the conductivity of any substance would depend upon the quantity of ether contained in it, and we can give no other reason for there being conductors and non-conductors of electricity. All matter has been thought to be pervaded by the ether, but we have said before that this must be the case in a limited sense only. It can be shown that glass is permeable to ether, and is therefore not an absolute non-conductor. Metals are supposed to consist of atoms bombarding and revolving around each other under the control of ether. Intermediate conductors may have the quantity in them of ether corresponding to their conductivity; and the compressibility of water, or any liquid, may depend upon the quantity of the ether mixed with its ultimate atoms.
Although we consider it to be going rather beyond the course we had laid out for ourselves, we cannot help returning to the article on the "Northern Lights" in "Science for All," quoted above in connection with electricity in the presence of a vacuum; because it helps to illustrate the subject we are dealing with.
In the regions where these Lights are seen, we know that there can be no want of ether, because it is supposed to pervade all space; but we know that there must be a very great want of air, or vapour of any kind, due to the height above the earth at which they are seen. Here, then, we have a great field for differences of pressures being caused all through it, by the collisions among themselves of the molecules or atoms of the extremely attenuated air; we have the higher or lower pressed zones of the laboratory experiment spread out before us, and if we suppose currents of electricity to be passed through them, we have an aurora in the high heavens, a counterpart of what was seen in the vacuum tube. The bombardment of the molecules continually shifting their positions and creating zones of different pressures, when lighted up by electricity, would easily account for the flashes, coruscations, and changes of the aurora; but, how does the air get up so high as is stated in the quotation at page 228?