

ATOMIC DISINTEGRATION. 



159 



if the atom of hydrogen contains 1,000 corpuscles, oxygen 

 will contain 16,000, mercury 200,000, and so on. These 

 numbers will be whole numbers and Prout's hypothesis 

 will be true, not in the sense that the atoms of all the ele- 

 ments are built up of hydrogen atoms but that they are 

 built up of primordial atoms a thousand times smaller than 

 the hydrogen atom. 



TRIADS OF DOBEREINER. 



We have stated on page 21 that out of the list of the 

 acorns of the elements little groups of three could be 

 chosen with strongly correlated properties and owning to a 

 pronounced family relationship; while connected with this 

 relationship was the curious fact that the mean of the atomic 

 weights of the first and the third was approximately, but 

 not exactly, equal to the atomic weight of the middle one. 

 This previously incomprehensible fact finds ready and sim- 

 ple explanation on the basis of our theory in the way in 

 which the corpuscles arrange themselves in groups to form 

 the atoms. 



Similarity of arrangement means similarity of property 

 throughout the whole range of chemistry. Consequently, 

 if the collections of corpuscles in the tables above consti- 

 tuted atoms we should not only expect, but we should be 

 very sure, that atoms containing similar rings would possess 

 similar properties. If we take collections containing similar 

 rings we find the Triads of Dobereiner, thus: 



