62 THE NEW KNOWLEDGE. 



Before proceeding to this, however, there are certain in- 

 teresting facts about -== 10,000,000 that deserve our at- 

 tentive consideration. The first fact is, that no matter 

 from what source these corpuscles come, whether glowing 

 metals, gases or what not no matter by what method 

 they are evolved, whether light, electricity or heat and 

 no matter by which one of the many experimental methods 



the value of is deduced the result, within the limits 



of experimental error, is a constant quantity, about 

 10,000,000. This shows us that the corpuscles, whatever 

 their nature, are independent of the kind of matter from 

 which they are evolved. The second interesting fact is 



that the value of ^ for the lightest chemical atom known, 

 that of hydrogen, is only about 10,000, which is one thou- 

 sand times less than the value of - for the corpuscle. 



m 



The question now arises: Is this thousand times differ- 

 ence between the ion and the corpuscle due to a difference 

 in the masses of the ions, or to a difference in the electrical 

 charge, or to both ? Let us have at e, then, to settle the 

 matter. 



