Page:A history of the theories of aether and electricity. Whittacker E.T. (1910).pdf/354

 neighbourhood of a vortex filament is the same as the distribution of magnetic force around a wire of identical form carrying an electric current, it is evident that the fluid has more energy when the filament has the form of a helix than when it is straight; so if space were filled with vortices, whose axes were all parallel to a given direction, there would be an increase in the energy per unit volume when the vortices were bent into a spiral form; and this could be measured by the square of a vector—say, E—which may be supposed parallel to this direction.

If now a single spiral vortex is surrounded by parallel straight ones, the latter will not remain straight, but will be bent by the action of their spiral neighbour. The transference of spirality may be specified by a vector H, which will be distributed in circles round the spiral vortex; its magnitude will depend on the rate at which spirality is being lost by the original spiral, and can be taken such that its square is equal to the mean energy of this new motion. The vectors E and H will then represent the electric and magnetic vectors; the vortex spirals representing tubes of electric force.

FitzGerald's spirality is essentially similar to the laminar motion investigated by Lord Kelvin, since it involves a flow in the direction of the axis of the spiral, and such a flow cannot take place along the direction of a vortex filament without a spiral deformation of a filament.

Other vortex analogues have been devised for electrostatical systems. Ono such, which was described in 1888 by W. M. Hicks, depends on the circumstance that if two bodies in contact in an infinite fluid are separated from each other, and if there be a vortex filament which terminates on the bodies, there will be formed at the point where they separate a hollow vortex filament stretching from one to the other, with rotation