molecules in the crowd, but to the number of the individual corpuscles. The mean free path is inversely proportional to the number of collisions in unit time, and so inversely proportional to the number of corpuscles in unit volume; now as these corpuscles are all of the same mass, the number of corpuscles in unit volume will be proportional to the mass of unit volume, that is the mean free path will be inversely proportional to the density of the gas. We see, too, that so long as the distance between neighbouring corpuscles is large compared with the linear dimensions of a corpuscle the mean free path will be independent of the way they are arranged, provided the number in unit volume remains constant, that is the mean free path will depend only on the density of the medium traversed by the corpuscles, and will be independent of its chemical nature and physical state: this from Lenard's very remarkable measurements of the absorption of the cathode rays by various media, must be a property possessed by the carriers of the charges in the cathode rays.
Thus on this view we have in cathode rays matter in a new state, a state in which the subdivision of matter is carried very much further than in the ordinary gaseous state: a state in which all matter — that is, matter derived from different sources such as hydrogen, oxygen, &c.- is of one and the same kind; this matter being the substance from which all the chemical elements are built up.
With appliances of ordinary magnitude, the quantity of matter produced by means of the dissociation at the cathode is so small as to almost to preclude the possibility of any direct chemical investigation of its properties. Thus the coil I used would, I calculate, if kept going uninterruptedly night and day for a year, produce only about one three-millionth part of a gramme of this substance.
The smallness of the value of m/e is, I think, due to the largeness of e as well as the smallness of m. There seems to me to be some evidence that the charges carried by the corpuscles in the atom are large compared with those carried by the ions of an electrolyte. In the molecule of HCl, for example, I picture the components of the hydrogen atoms as held together by a great number of tubes of electrostatic force; the components of the chlorine are similarly held together, while only one stray tube binds the hydrogen atom to the chlorine atom. The reason for attributing this high charge to the constituents of the atom is derived from the values of the specific inductive capacity of gases: we may imagine that the specific inductive capacity of a gas is due to the setting in the electric field of the electric doublet formed
