ATOMIC DISINTEGRATION. 165 



groups of 59 and 67 corpuscles are exceedingly interesting. 

 We have said that 59 corpuscles are on the very verge of 

 instability and would, hence, readily lose a corpuscle and 

 thereby acquire a positive charge. But they would not re- 

 tain this charge. For when the group had lost a corpuscle 

 58 corpuscles would remain. But 58 corpuscles constitute 

 the last group which has an outer ring of 19. This ring 

 is exceedingly stable just as the ring of 67 corpuscles is 

 stable so that no more corpuscles could escape from it, 

 while the positive charge on it due to the escape of the 59th 

 corpuscle would attract the surrounding corpuscles and one 

 would immediately dart to it and become attached to it, 

 when it would become once more 59 only to reundergo the 

 same change over and over and over again. An atom so 

 constituted would be neither electro-positive nor electro- 

 negative but one incapable of receiving any charge of elec- 

 tricity whatever. The group containing 60 corpuscles 

 would be the most electro-positive of the series. It could 

 lose only one corpuscle, that is, acquire a charge of only 

 one unit of positive electricity, for if it lost two we should 

 again have 58 corpuscles which would have double the pos- 

 itive charge and double the readiness to catch corpuscles 

 which we found in the group of 59. Thus the group of 

 60 corpuscles would get charged with one, and one only, 

 unit of positive electricity. It would thus behave like the 

 atom of a monovalent electro-positive element like sodium. 

 The group containing 61 corpuscles would not be so ready 

 to lose its corpuscles as the group of 60, but on the other 

 hand it could afford to lose two for it is not until it has lost 

 three that its corpuscles become reduced to 58 when, as we 

 have seen, it begins to acquire fresh corpuscles. It would 

 thus act like the divalent positive element magnesium. 

 Similarly the group of 62 though less willing to lose its cor- 



