CONSTITUTION OF THE ATOM—EVE. 185 
The trouble to which Rayleigh referred was first faced by Ritz in 
a startling manner. He imagined that there were inside the atom, 
placed end to end, a number of small magnets with an electron con- 
strained to move in a circular path around the line of magnets. 
With this hypothesis he was able to account correctly for the above 
law for series of lines in the spectrum. 
We may appreciate Poincaré’s criticism— 
On a quelque peine a accepter cette conception, qui a je ne sais quoi d’artificiel. 
Inasmuch as physicists endeavor to explain magnetism in terms 
of revolving electrons, there is a lack of simplicity, and there is an 
inconsistency, in introducing elemental magnets inside the atom. 
Nevertheless, it must be admitted that Weiss has found remarkable 
evidence for the conception of magnetons or elemental unit magnets, 
producing intramolecular fields reaching to millions of Gauss units, 
far transcending any produced by our most powerful electromagnets, 
and difficult to explain by revolving electrons. 
Again to quote Poincaré— 
Qu’ est-ce maintenant qu’un magnéton? Est-ce quelque chose de simple? Non, 
si l’on ne veut pas renoncer a l’hypothése des courants particulaires d’Ampére; un 
magnéton est alors un tourbillon d’électrons, et voila notre atome qui complique de 
plus en plus. 
Perhaps the hypothesis of Bohr, danas pil later, may overcome the 
difficulty, but for some time to come the more prudent will suspend 
judgment on the magneton. 
Recently there has been nothing short of a revolution in physics. 
In certain domains, the leading workers and thinkers have deliberately 
abandoned the classical dynamics and electrodynamics, and made 
suppositions which are in direct opposition to these. This startling 
change may perhaps be justified by the fact that the famous laws 
and equations were based on large-scale experiments, so that they 
do not necessarily apply to conditions within the atom. Those who 
put forward and make use of the new hypotheses, men like Planck 
and Lorentz, Poincaré and Jeans, and others, appear to do so with 
reluctance, like a retiring army forced from one position to another. 
Others, like Rayleigh a Larmor, appear to regard the whole move- 
‘ment with misgivings, and some endeavor, like Walker and Callendar, 
to find a way out. There is a young school who go joyfully forward, 
selecting and suggesting somewhat wild hypotheses, and yet attain- 
ing an unexpected measure of success by their apparently reckless 
methods. 
The main phenomena to which the new mechanics have been ap- 
plied are the radiation within an inclosure, and the distribution of 
energy therein; the high speed of electrons ejected from matter by 
ultra-violet light, or by Réntgen rays, or by the gamma or pene- 
