other words, one ray suffers greater absorption than the other. It seems probable that with greater thickness of crystal one ray would be completely absorbed. I found other crystals behaving more or less in the same way. I reserve for another communication particulars of experiments bearing on this subject.
Lastly, I tried an experiment with a crystal of Iceland Spar taken out of a polarising apparatus. With this I got distinct depolarising action.
Summary.—Crystals which do not belong to the Regular System, polarise the electric ray just in the same way as they do a ray of ordinary light. Theoretically, all crystals, with the exception of those belonging to the Regular System, ought to polarise light. But this could not hitherto be verified in the case of opaque crystals. There is now no such difficulty with the electric ray, for all crystals are transparent to it. As a matter of fact, all the above experiments, with one exception, were performed with specimens opaque to light, and it was an interesting phenomenon to observe the restoration of the extinguished electric radiation, itself invisible, by the interposition of what appears to the eye to be a perfectly opaque block of crystal, between the crossed gratings.
(Asiatic Soc. of Bengal, May 1895.)
