A TRADITION is growing (cf. NATURE, March 9, p. 316), and requires scrutiny, that it was owing to discouragement by Sir George Stokes that D. E. Hughes abandoned his experiments in 1879, anticipatory of the methods and apparatus of modern wireless telegraphy. This is in contrast to all that is known of Stokes' extreme caution in advancing opinions, for which in fact he has usually been blamed, for example by Kelvin and Rayleigh in connection with spectrum analysis. From the modest letter of Hughes published in the Electrician in 1899, and in Fahie's “History of Wireless Telegraphy,” Appendix D, which describes his very remarkable investigations, such an inference could scarcely be fairly drawn: “The experiments shown were most successful, and at first they (Spottiswoode, Huxley, and Stokes) seemed astonished at the results; but towards the close of three hours' experiments Prof. Stokes said that all the results could be explained by known electro-magnetic induction effects, and therefore he could not accept my view of actual aereal electric waves, unknown up to that time, but thought I had quite enough original matter to form a paper on the subject to be read at the Royal Society”. Hughes continues that he was so dismayed at being unable to convince them that he actually refused to write a paper on the subject until he was better prepared to demonstrate the existence of these waves, and with this end in view he continued his experiments for some years (Fahie, loc. cit. p. 310).