THE SEARCH FOR PRIMAL MATTER 



platinum, burned and boiled and spluttered away, 

 as if in a fierce caldron. They evaporated like 

 boiling water, and the glass on the opposite side 

 became coated with a thin film. This has often 

 been used since to make delicate little metal mir- 

 rors, for scientific use. This "electrical evapora- 

 tion" was decidedly another step in this puzzling 

 study, and seems destined to play a considerable 

 role in what one may largely describe as the ulti- 

 mate explanation of what is matter. It is possible 

 by this means to split up the solidest of bodies in 

 parts of an almost indescribable fineness, not mere- 

 ly into atoms, but, as we shall see, perhaps into the 

 very primal basis of matter, the stuff of which all 

 known things are composed. 



Next Professor Crookes took a magnet, and, 

 bringing it near his exhausted bulb, streaming with 

 cathode rays, saw the rays bent and twisted as if 

 they had been taken hold of and pulled down. 

 Then, by rigging up two little cathodes side by 

 side, and thus bringing into existence two parallel 

 streams of cathode rays, he saw these rays mutually 

 push each other away. They repelled one another 

 just as do the like poles of a pair of magnets. So 

 he said these rays must in some way carry an 

 electrical charge. But the means to measure this 

 charge were lacking then. 



Professor Crookes observed another curious fact: 



