410 Conduction in Solutions and Gases. 



and Becquerel* succeeded in deviating them by an electrostatic 

 field. The deviable or j3- rays were thus clearly of the same 

 nature as cathode rays ; and when measurements of the electric 

 and magnetic deviations gave for the ratio m/e a value of the 

 order 10~ 7 , the identity of the /3-particles with the cathode-ray 

 corpuscles was fully established. 



The subsequent history of the new branch of physics thus 

 created falls outside the limits of the present work. We must 

 now consider the progress which was achieved in the general 

 theory of aether and electricity in the last decade of the 

 nineteenth century. 



* Comptes Eendus, c>xx (1900), p. 809. 



