In dealing with terrestrial operations generally, and particularly when transmission processes are under consideration, it is important to recognise clearly the precise nature of these operations and the peculiar conditions under which they work. It must ever be borne in mind that the terrestrial atmosphere is a real and material portion of the earth's mass, extending from the surface for a limited distance into space (§ 34), and whatever its condition of gaseous tenuity, completely occupying that space in the manner peculiar to a gaseous substance. When the whole mass of the planet, including the atmosphere, is taken into consideration, it is readily seen that all energy operations embodied in or associated with material on what is usually termed the surface of the earth take place at the bottom of this atmospheric ocean, or, in reality, in the interior of the earth. The operations themselves are the manifestations of purely terrestrial energy, which, by its working in various devices or arrangements of material is being transformed and transmitted from one form of matter to another. As will be fully demonstrated later (Part III.), the nature of the terrestrial energy system makes it impossible for this energy ever to escape beyond the confines of the planetary atmospheric envelope. These are briefly the general conditions under which the study of terrestrial or secondary energy operations is of necessity conducted, and it is specially important to notice these conditions when it is sought to apply the results of experimental work to the discussion of celestial phenomena. It must ever be borne in mind that even the direct observation of the latter must always be carried out through the encircling planetary atmospheric material.