88 UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI BULLETIN 



nating displacements of the electricity with which the corpus- 

 cles are charged. The number of corpuscles in each chemical 

 atom seems to be about the same as the number of times by 

 which its atomic mass exceeds that of hydrogen ; with cor- 

 responding positive charges in each atom equal to the amount 

 of its negative electrons, but not like the negative electricity 

 split up into separate corpuscles. Here, then, the corpuscle 

 is introduced as a new entity. Is not it, too, a complex sys- 

 tem within which internal events are forever taking place? 

 And when this question can be answered shall we not be in 

 the presence of the inter-active parts of an electron? And 

 do not the same questions arise with respect to these? For 

 there is no appearance of there being any limit to the minute- 

 ness of the scale upon which nature works. Nothing in nature 

 seems to be too small to have parts incessantly active among 

 themselves. 



The lines of Hudibras 



"The big fleas have little fleas upon them 

 to bite them, 

 The little fleas have lesser ones and so on 

 ad infinitum" 



may apply here. 



With the advent of the electron or corpuscle we are in- 

 clined to cry with Archimedes, Eureka!, but can we as some 

 one said, if we, like Archimedes rush into the street, ex- 

 plain to the first man or woman we meet what is meant by 

 an electron or corpuscle? Perhaps we can, perhaps we can- 

 not. Let me try mostly in the words of Sir Joseph John Thom- 

 son to whose genius the proof of the mass of the corpuscles 

 or electrons is mainly due. 



The study of the electron or corpuscle is carried on by 

 electrical methods and of these Sir Joseph Thomson says : 

 "The great advantage of the electrical methods for the study 

 of the properties of matter is due to the fact that whenever 



