186 THE NEW KNOWLEDGE. 



gases, liquids and solids. In gases the electricity is con- 

 veyed by free corpuscles, flying bullet-like, and with veloci- 

 ties amounting, sometimes, to a hundred thousand miles a 

 second. In liquids the velocity is more nearly an inch an 

 .hour. In liquids, the corpuscles travel with the atoms, and 

 for this reason travel slowly. Liquid conduction is what 

 Sir Oliver Lodge calls " the bird-seed method of conduction;" 

 for the corpuscle travels through the liquid from one elec- 

 trode to the other much as a bird carries a seed. It moves 

 slowly because it must jostle its way through the throng 

 of other atoms, and also because of the load of the heavy 

 atom it conveys. In the case of solids, or metallic con- 

 duction, the atoms are fixed in their places relatively to 

 one another. Their only power is that of vibration. The 

 corpuscles, therefore, can go from one end of the wire to 

 the other, only by being handed on. Each atom in the 

 string along the wire receives one and passes it, or another 

 like it, on to the next, so that for every corpuscle that 

 starts at one end of the wire, another like it passes out at 

 the other end. 



Magnetism, on the basis of the electronic theory, is a 

 force developed at right angles to the moving charge. 

 This magnetism may be seen in the free corpuscles flying 

 through a Crookes' tube where they may be bent up and 

 down by a magnet; in the beta-rays from radium where 

 they also fly free ; or in the magnetism developed in a wire 

 when corpuscles are being handed on through it and con- 

 stituting what we call a current. Light, Rontgen rays 

 and all other radiations result, and must result, from dis- 

 turbances in the surrounding ether whenever the velocity 

 of the electric charge is accelerated, diminished, stopped 

 or changed in direction. 



The electronic theory teaches us: 



