pieces, the details of the process differing a little in the two cases.
In those individuals which produce crystalligerous swarm-spores,
each spore encloses a small crystal (fig. III. 15). On the other hand,
in those individuals which produce dimorphous swarm-spores, the
contents of the capsule (which in both instances are set free by its
natural rupture) are seen to consist of individuals of two sizes,
‘megaspores’ and ‘microspores,’ neither of which contain
crystals (fig. III. 16). The further development of the spores has
not been observed in either case. Both processes have been observed
in the same species, and it is suggested that there is an alternation
of sexual and asexual generations, the crystalligerous spores developing
directly into adults, which in their turn produce in their central
capsules dimorphous swarm-spores (megaspores and microspores),
which in a manner analogous to that observed in the Volvocinean
Flagellata copulate (permanently fuse) with one another (the larger
with the smaller) before proceeding to develop. The adults resulting
from this process would, it is suggested, produce in their turn
crystalligerous swarm-spores. Unfortunately we have no observations
to support this hypothetical scheme of a life-history.
“Fusion or conjugation of adult Radiolaria, whether preliminary to swarm-spore-production or independently of it, has not been observed—this affording a distinction between them and Heliozoa.
“Simple fission of the central capsule of adult individuals, preceded of course by nuclear fission, and subsequently of the whole protoplasmic mass, has been observed in several genera of Acantharia and Phaeodaria, and is probably a general method of reproduction in the group. In Spumellaria it gives rise to colonial ‘Polycyttarian’ forms when the extra capsular protoplasm does not divide.
“The siliceous shells of the Radiolaria are found abundantly in certain rocks from Palaeozoic times onwards. They furnish, together with Diatoms and Sponge spicules, the silica which has been segregated as flint in the Chalk formation. They are present in quantity (as much as 10%) in the Atlantic ooze, and in the celebrated ‘Barbados earth’ (a Tertiary deposit) are the chief components.”
Bibliography.—The most important systematic works are those of E. Haeckel, Die Radiolarien (1862-87), and the “Report” on the Radiolaria of the “Challenger” Expedition (vol. xviii., 1887), which contains full lists of the older literature. Among the most important recent studies we cite K. Brandt, “Die Koloniebildenden Radiolarien” in Fauna and Flora des Golfes von Neapel, xii. (1885); A. Borgert in Zeitschrift f. Wissenschaftliche Zoologie, li. (1891), and Zoologische Jahrbücher (Anatomie), xiii. (1900); F. Dreyer in Jenäischer Zeitschr., xix. (1892); V. Häcker in Zeitsch. f. Wiss. Zool., lxxxiii. (1905).
- (M. Ha.)
RADIOMETER. It had been remarked at various times, amongst others by Fresnel, that bodies delicately suspended within a partial vacuum are subject to apparent repulsion by radiation. The question was definitely investigated by Sir W. Crookes, who had found that some delicate weightings in vacuo were vitiated by this cause. It appeared that a surface blackened so as to absorb the radiant energy directed on it was repelled relatively to a polished surface. He constructed an apparatus in illustration, which he called a radiometer or light-mill, by pivoting a vertical axle carrying equidistant vertical vanes inside an exhausted glass bulb, one side of each vane being blackened and the other side bright, the blackened sides all pointing the same way round the axle. When the rays of the sun or a candle, or dark radiation from a warm body, are incident on the vanes, the dark side of each vane is repelled more than the bright side, and thus the vanes are set into rotation with accelerated speed, which becomes uniform when the forces produced by the radiation are balanced by the friction of the pivot and of the residual air in the globe. The name radiometer arose from an idea that the final steady speed of rotation might be utilized as a rough measure of the intensity of the exciting radiation.
The problem of the cause of these striking and novel phenomena at first produced considerable perplexity. A preliminary question was whether the mechanical impulsion was a direct effect of the light, or whether the radiation only set up internal stresses, acting in and through the residual air, between the vanes and the walls of the enclosure. The answer to this was found experimentally by Arthur Schuster, who suspended the whole instrument in delicate equilibrium, and observed the effect of introducing the radiation. If the light exerted direct impulsion on the vanes, their motion would gradually drag the case round after them, by reason of the friction of the residual air in the bulb and of the pivot. On the other hand, if the effects arose from balanced stresses set up inside the globe by the radiation, the effects on the vanes and on the case would be of the nature of action and reaction, so that the establishment of motion of the vanes in one direction would involve impulsion of the case in the opposite direction; but when the motion became steady there would no longer be any torque either on the vanes or on the case, and the latter would therefore come back to its previous position of equilibrium; finally, when the light was turned off, the decay of the motion of the vanes would involve impulsion of the case in the direction of their motion until the moment of the restoring torque arising from the suspension of the case had absorbed the angular momentum in the system. Experiment showed that the latter prediction was what happened. The important part played by the residual air in the globe had also been deduced by Osborne Reynolds from observing that on turning off the light, the vanes came to rest very much sooner than the friction of the pivot alone would account for; in fact, the rapid subsidence is an illustration of Maxwell's great theoretical discovery that viscosity in a gas (as also diffusion both of heat and of the gas itself) is sensibly independent of the density. Some phenomena of retardation in the production of the effect had led Sir G. G. Stokes and Sir W. Crookes to the same general conclusion.
The origin of these phenomena was recognized, among the first by O. Reynolds, and by P. G. Tait and J. Dewar, as a consequence of the kinetic theory of the constitution of gaseous media. The temperature of a gas is measured by the mean energy of translation of its molecules, which are independent of each other except during the brief intervals of collision; and collision of the separate molecules with the blackened surface of a vane, warmed by the radiation, imparts heat to them, so that they rebound from it with greater velocity than they approached. This increase of velocity implies an increase of the reaction on the surface, the black side of a vane being thus pressed with greater force than the bright side. In air of considerable density the mean free path of a molecule, between its collisions with other molecules, is exceedingly small, and any such increase of gaseous pressure in front of the black surface would be immediately neutralized by flow of the gas from places of high to places of low pressure. But at high exhaustions the free path becomes comparable with the dimensions of the glass bulb, and this equalization proceeds slowly. The general nature of the phenomena is thus easily understood; but it is at a maximum at pressures comparable with a millimetre of mercury, at which the free path is still small, the greater number of molecules operating in intensifying the result. The problem of the stresses in rarefied gaseous media arising from inequalities of temperature, which is thereby opened out, involves some of the most delicate considerations in molecular physics. It remains practically as it was left in 1879 by two memoirs communicated to the Phil. Trans. by Osborne Reynolds and by Clerk Maxwell. The method of the latter investigator was purely a priori. He assumed that the distribution of molecules and of their velocities, at each point, was slightly modified, from the exponential law belonging to a uniform condition, by the gradient of temperature in the gas (see Diffusion). The hypothesis that the state was steady, so that interchanges arising from convection and collisions of the molecules produced no aggregate result, enabled him to interpret the new constants involved in this law of distribution, in terms of the temperature and its spacial differential coefficients, and thence to express the components of the kinetic stress at each point in the medium in terms of these quantities. As far as the order to which he carried the approximations—which, however, were based on a simplifying hypothesis that the molecules influenced each other through mutual repulsions inversely as the fifth power of their distance apart—the result was that the equations of motion of the gas, considered as subject to viscous and thermal stresses, could be satisfied by a state of equilibrium under a modified internal pressure equal in all directions. If, therefore, the walls of the enclosure held
