almost impossible to completely obviate such little imperfections, I am led to believe that in our future distribution of electrical energy by currents of very high tension liquid insulation will be used.  The cost is a great drawback, but if we employ an oil as an insulator the distribution of electrical energy with something like 100,000 volts, and even more, become, at least with higher frequencies, so easy that they could be hardly called engineering feats.  With oil insulation and alternate current motors transmissions of power can be effected with safety and upon an industrial basis at distances of as much as a thousand miles.

A peculiar property of oils, and liquid insulation in general, when subjected to rapidly changing electric stresses, is to disperse any gaseous bubbles which may be present, and diffuse them through its mass, generally long before any injurious break can occur.  This feature may be easily observed with an ordinary induction coil by taking the primary out, plugging up the end of the tube upon which the secondary is wound, and filling it with some fairly transparent insulator, such as paraffine oil.  A primary of a diameter something like six millimetres smaller than the inside of the tube may be inserted in the oil.  When the coil is set to work one may see, looking from the top through the oil, many luminous points—­air bubbles which are caught by inserting the primary, and which are rendered luminous in consequence of the violent bombardment.  The occluded air, by its impact against the oil, heats it; the oil begins to circulate, carrying some of the air along with it, until the bubbles are dispersed and the luminous points disappear.  In this manner, unless large bubbles are occluded in such way that circulation is rendered impossible, a damaging break is averted, the only effect being a moderate warming up of the oil.  If, instead of the liquid, a solid insulation, no matter how thick, were used, a breaking through and injury of the apparatus would be inevitable.

The exclusion of gaseous matter from any apparatus in which the dielectric is subjected to more or less rapidly changing electric forces is, however, not only desirable in order to avoid a possible injury of the apparatus, but also on account of economy.  In a condenser, for instance, as long as only a solid or only a liquid dielectric is used, the loss is small; but if a gas under ordinary or small pressure be present the loss may be very great.  Whatever the nature of the force acting in the dielectric may be, it seems that in a solid or liquid the molecular displacement produced by the force is small; hence the product of force and displacement is insignificant, unless the force be very great; but in a gas the displacement, and therefore this product, is considerable; the molecules are free to move, they reach high speeds, and the energy of their impact is lost in heat or otherwise.  If the gas be strongly compressed, the displacement due to the force is made smaller, and the losses are reduced.