In 1899, at the jubilee commemoration of Sir George Stokes, he was Rede lecturer at Cambridge, his subject being the undulatory theory of light and its influence on modern physics; and on that occasion the honorary degree of D.Sc. was conferred on him by the university.
It showed an undulatory movement as it flew across the sky, like the flight of a bat.
The surface is undulatory; marshy meadow lands no longer exist on the flat watersheds, and only a few in the deeper and broader river valleys.
It was a favourite idea of his that chemical affinity and capillary attraction would eventually be included under the same law, and it was perhaps because of its recalcitrance to this cherished generalization that the undulatory theory of light was distasteful to him.
The question of whether the aether is carried along by the earth's motion has been considered from the early days of the undulatory theory of light.