NEW PLUMS AND PRUNES 157 



shall gain a still more enlightening view of the 

 complexity of our plum-bud microcosm. 



It has been estimated by a French physicist, 

 Becquerel, that the size of the individual elec- 

 trons that make up the atom is such that they 

 may be thought of, not as piled solidly together 

 within the structure of the atom, but rather as 

 infinitely separated by comparison, like a swarm 

 of gnats flying about in the dome of a cathedral. 



It is a little difficult for anyone not accus- 

 tomed to this particular use of the imagination to 

 follow the conceptions of the physicist. But we 

 may accept his findings as authoritative, for they 

 are the result not of one man's work alone 

 but of tests that have been applied by many 

 workers. 



Making the application to our plum bud, then, 

 it appears that its bulk is such as to give us as- 

 surance that it contains (although it actually is 

 no larger than the smallest pea) a number of 

 atoms so great that if the atoms were conceived 

 to be all gathered into 8,000 different groups 

 (each group representing a different variety of 

 future plum), there is material enough to supply 

 at least eight million billion atoms in each group ! 

 And each of these atoms is itself a complex 

 structure made up of several thousand electric 

 corpuscles. 



