166 THE NEW KNOWLEDGE. 



puscles than 61 could on the other hand afford to lose three 

 before beginning to seize more. It would thus act like, let 

 us say, the element aluminum. 



Turning now to the other interesting group, 67 corpuscles, 

 at the end of the series, we find that its ring of 20 corpuscles 

 is more stable than any of the others, but if the system 

 acquires another corpuscle the 68 corpuscles would arrange 

 themselves with a ring of 21 on the outside. This group- 

 ing as we have seen is on the very verge of instability and 

 would readily lose its corpuscle and pass back again into 

 its old configuration. Consequently, the group of 67 cor- 

 puscles like the group of 59 is incapable of receiving a charge 

 at all. The group of 66 would be the most electro-negative 

 of the series but it could afford to retain only one unit of 

 negative electricity for if it acquired two there would be 68 

 a system which we have seen to be unstable. It would 

 thus act like a very strongly electro-negative element like 

 chlorine. 



The group of 65 though less ready than 66 to retain 

 corpuscles could, nevertheless, retain two and hence would 

 act like a divalent negative element like sulphur. Similai ly 

 the group of 64 would act like the atom of a trivalent 

 element after the style of phosphorus. 



Thus taking those groups of corpuscles which contain 20 

 corpuscles in their outer rings and numbering from 59 to 

 67 respectively we are able to show that they would neces- 

 sarily behave in their general properties like a horizontal 

 series of elements in the periodic law. 



VALENCY. 



We are now able, to a reasonable extent, to explain val- 

 ency, page 37. Valency we have always defined in chemistry 



