Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
1. Introduction. Little has been written on the effects of surface tension (or cohesion) on waves in liquid media; this is not surprising as in general its effects are small compared with those of gravity or compressibility, except in the case of ripple motion (Lamb (3), sections 265, 267). Bondi (1) has investigated the problem of a compressible fluid half space; he found that under cohesive action ‘faster-than-sound’ propagation along the surface is possible, and he studied it with the aid of an elegant image-function-space method; but he carefully points out the small size of the parameters involved.