a rearrangement of the figures in greater groups, with consequent recalculation.
A circumstance that argues very greatly in favour of the opinion that the absorption-coefficient given in Table II. cannot contain great errors, is that so very few logarithms have a positive value. If the observations of Langley had been wholly insufficient, one would have expected to find nearly as many positive as negative logarithms. Now there are only three such cases, viz., for carbonic acid at an angle of 40°, and for water-vapour at the angles 36°.45 and 36°.15. The observations for 40° are not very accurate, because they were of little interest to Langley, the corresponding rays not belonging to the moon's spectrum but only to the diffused sunlight from the moon. As these rays also do not occur to any sensible degree in the heat from a body of 15° C., this non-agreement is without importance for our problem. The two positive values for the logarithms belonging to aqueous vapour are quite insignificant. They correspond only to errors of 0.2 and 1.5 per cent, for the absorption of the quantity , and fall wholly in the range of experimental errors.
It is certainly not devoid of interest to compare these absorption-coefficients with the results of the direct observations by Paschen and Ångström[1]. In making this comparison, we must bear in mind that an exact agreement cannot be expected, for the signification of the above coefficients is rather unlike that of the coefficients that are or may be calculated from the observations of these two authors. The above coefficients give the rate of absorption of a ray that has traversed quantities of carbonic acid () and water-vapour (); whilst the coefficients of Paschen and Ångström represent the absorption experienced by a ray on the passage through the first layers of these gases. In some cases we may expect a great difference between these two quantities, so that only a general agreement can be looked for.
According to Paschen's figures there seems to exist no sensible emission or absorption by the aqueous vapour at wave-lengths between and (corresponding to the angle of deviation 40°). On the other hand, the representation of the sun's spectrum by Langley shows a great many
- ↑ Paschen, Wied. Ann. 1. p. 409, 1893; li. p. 1, lii. p. 209, and liii. p. 334, 1894, especially vol. 1. tab. ix. fig. 5, curve 1 for carbonic acid, curve 2 for aqueous vapour. Ångström, Bihang till K. Vet-Ak, Handlingar, Bd. xv. Afd. 1, No. 9, p. 15, 1889; Öfversigt af K. Vet.-Ak. Förhandl. 1889, No. 9, p. 553.
