Part VI (_Trans. R.S._, 1875) of the investigations of the

electrodynamic qualities of metals dealt with the effects of stretching and compressing force, and of torsion, on the magnetisation of iron and steel and of nickel and cobalt.

One of the principal results was the discovery that the effect of longitudinal pull is to increase the inductive magnetisation of soft iron, and of transverse thrust to diminish it, so long as the magnetising field does not exceed a certain value. When this value, which depends on the specimen, is exceeded, the effect of stress is reversed. The field-intensity at which the effect is reversed is called the Villari critical intensity, from the fact, afterwards ascertained, that the result had previously been established by Villari in Italy. No such critical value of the field was found to exist for steel, or nickel, or cobalt.

In some of the experiments the specimen was put through a cycle of magnetic changes, and the results recorded by curves. These proved that in going from one state to another and returning the material lagged in its return path behind the corresponding states in the outward path. This is the phenomenon called later "hysteresis," and studied in minute detail by Ewing and others. Thomson's magnetic work was thus the starting point of many more recent researches.