Memoirs presented to the Cambridge philosophical society on the occasion of the jubilee of Sir George Gabriel Stokes, bart., Hon. LL. D., Hon. SC. D., Lucasian professor.

384 MR LARMOR, ON THE DYNAMICS OF A SYSTEM OF ELECTRONS OR IONS:
condition of being a stream, but their sum, the total current of Maxwell, always satisfies
this condition.
2. The present problem being that of the interactions of individual electrons
transmitted through the aether, it will be necessary to retain these electrons as distinct
entities. The value of (F, G, H) at any point is therefore of type
F= 1l df dT exe
F=Ji dT~,
in which r represents the distance of the point from the element of volume in the
integral and from the electron respectively. Thus
2T = o- ((i2 + giY2 + hih2) r12- dTdT2
+ e f/2 ri2- 1 dr2 + >ey g r~2-1 dr2 + fez hi2r2-l dr2
+ Z.elei (, 2 + j1Y2 + Z 2) r12-,
in which each pair of electrons occurs only once in the double summation.
Also W = 2rc2 f(2 + g2 + h2) dr.
In omitting the intrinsic energy of an electron and only taking into account the
energy terms arising from the interaction of its electric flux with the other electric fluxes
in the field, we have however neglected a definite amount of kinetic energy arising
from the motion of the strain-configuration constituting the electron and proportional to
the square of its velocity: this will be the translational kinetic energy
To= Le2 (î2 + y2 + z2)
or we may write
T,= '2 7( 2+ y2+ 2\)
where m is thus the coefficient of inertia or 'mass' of the electron, which may either
be wholly of electric origin or may contain elements arising from other sources.
This transformation has introduced the positions of the electrons and the aetherstrain (f, g, h) as independent variables. It is necessary, for the dynamical analysis,
thus to take the aether-strain as the independent variable, instead of the coordinate
of which (a, 3, 7) is the velocity, which at first sight appears simpler. For part of
this strain is the intrinsic strain around the electrons; and the deformations of the
medium by which it may be considered to have been primordially produced must have
involved the discontinuous processes required to fix the strain in the medium, as otherwise it could not be permanent or intrinsic. If the latter coordinates were adopted