ATOMIC DISINTEGRATION. 161 



is reached, again disappear only to reappear with rubidium, 

 and so on. An inspection of the tables given above will 

 show that aggregations of corpuscles as they increase in 

 number from say five to seventy, will possess properties 

 similar to those discovered in the periodic law. If, for 

 example, certain properties are connected with a group of 

 five corpuscles, these properties will appear again when the 

 number increases to fifteen, for fifteen corpuscles consist of 

 that same group of five with ten others surrounding it. 

 The properties connected with these two groups of five and 

 fifteen corpuscles will then disappear until we again come 

 to two groups of five and ten corpuscles respectively, with 

 still another ring surrounding it. Inspection shows that 

 this occurs when the corpuscles number thirty, where we 

 have a group of five, surrounded by a group of ten sur- 

 rounded by a group of fifteen. For a next recurrence of 

 these properties we must now wait until the corpuscles 

 number forty-seven, when we again find the grouping five, 

 ten, fifteen, this time surrounded by a group of seventeen cor- 

 puscles. The arrangement then disappears to recur again 

 with sixty-seven corpuscles in the grouping five, ten, fifteen, 

 seventeen, twenty. This periodic rebuilding or recurrence 

 of the same groups as the number of corpuscles increases 

 is wonderfully analogous to the periodic appearance and 

 disappearance of certain properties of the elements as the 

 atomic weight rises; and if the atomic weight is measured 

 by the number of corpuscles the atom contains, and the 

 properties of the atom are dependent upon the arrange- 

 ment and grouping of the corpuscles within the atom, it is 

 obvious that we have, to a reasonable degree, solved the 

 problem of the periodic law. It means, simply, the periodic 

 recurrence of certain groups of corpuscles as the number 

 of corpuscles constituting the atom increases. The peri- 

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