92 UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI BULLETIN 



properties, very widely from the corpuscle? We know that 

 by suitable processes we can get corpuscles out of any kind 

 of matter, and that the corpuscles will be the same from what- 

 ever source they may be derived. Is a similar thing true for 

 positive electricity? Can we get, for example, a positive unit 

 from oxygen of the same kind as we get from hydrogen? 



"For my own part, I think the evidence is in favour of 

 the view that we can, although the nature of the unit of posi- 

 tive electricity makes the proof much more difficult than for 

 the negative unit. 



"In the first place we find that the positive particles — 

 'Canalstrahlen' is their technical name — which are found when 

 an electric discharge passes through a highly rarefied gas, are 

 when the pressure is very low, the same, whatever may have 

 been the gas in the vessel to begin with. 



"I have, for example, put into the exhausted vessel oxy- 

 gen, argon, helium, the vapour of carbon tetrachloride, none 

 of which contains hydrogen, and found the positive particles 

 to be the same as when hydrogen was introduced. 



"These and similar results lead to the conclusion that 

 the atoms of the different chemical elements contain definite 

 units of positive as well as of negative electricity, and that 

 the positive electricity, like the negative, is molecular in struc- 

 ture. 



"The investigations made on the unit of positive elec- 

 tricity show that it is of quite a different kind from the unit 

 of negative, the mass of the negative unit is very small com- 

 pared with any atom, the only positive units that up to the 

 present time have been detected are quite comparable in mass 

 with the mass of an atom of hydrogen ; in fact they seem 

 equal to it." 



A knowledge of the mass and size of the two units of 

 electricity, the positive and the negative, would be a starting- 

 point for a theory of the structure of matter (leaving out 

 entirely what has ordinarily been called matter) ; for the most 



