540 Van Breda on the Luminous Phenomena 



" By means of this apparatus, I could easily make the elec- 

 trodes approach and recede under a glass jar nearly void of 

 air ; by passing a discharge of a Leyden jar through electrodes 

 terminated by points, spheres or plates, I produced the transfer 

 of particles without contact and in vacuo. 



" The transfer also took place when a plate of metal, and 

 even of a metal different from that of the spheres, was interposed 

 between two spheres. 



" A most beautiful spectacle is seen in the vacuum. 1 doubt 

 not that it will soon be repeated in all lectures on physics, 

 where apparatus sufficiently energetic can be provided. 



" The transfer not only does not take place, as in the air, 

 under the form of a flame or of a very intense light, but if the 

 distance be not too great, the particles are projected in the 

 form of sparks; the matter issues from the electrodes in red- 

 dened brilliant globules, which break up into sparks of fire 

 against the plate interposed between the two spheres. 



" By this means the question proposed by M. De la Rive 

 in his last memoir may be answered. 



" * It is very difficult,' says this eminent philosopher, * to 

 determine what is the state of the incandescent system of par- 

 ticles which are transported from one pole to the other. Is it 

 a liquid state, or a kind of gaseous state? Is it simply a state 

 of powder ? The mere inspection of the phenomenon cannot 

 decide this: the physical constitution of the deposit seems to 

 prove that the particles have passed, at least in some cases, 

 through a liquid or gaseous state.' 



M There is no doubt that, in my experiments, the matter was 

 transported in a liquid state. Very considerable particles, 

 discernible by the naked eye, repelled by the surface of the 

 electrodes on which they were projected, may, after the expe- 

 riment, be gathered in a quantity at the bottom of the appa- 

 ratus in the form of small globules. They even fly out with 

 such force, that they are thrown, still liquid and melted, on 

 the sides of the jar in which the experiment is made; and in 

 their turn they melt the glass which they touch, and are found 

 incorporated in it. 



" These particles are all spherical, they have been melted ; 

 the observer's eye can follow them from the electrode from 

 which they issue, towards the other electrode of the form of a 

 plate, which repels them [sous la forme de plaque qui les r(jltchit\, 

 and to the bottom of the jar in which they may be collected. 



" When iron is employed, they are very attractable by the 

 magnet. 



" Another important consequence appears to me to result 

 from these experiments ; namely, that the particles which are 



