EXPLORING THE ATOM 



another only in the varying number or diverse ar- 

 rangement of their component electrons. 



This extreme view is perhaps hardly justified; but 

 on the other hand it appears to be established that 

 electrons are associated with every kind of matter, 

 and there is good reason to think that an electric 

 current consists essentially of a flight of electrons 

 along a conductor. Incandescent metals and metals 

 treated with ultra-violet light give out electrons. 

 Professor B. W. Richardson, of Princeton Uni- 

 versity, in recent experiments with filaments of the 

 metal tungsten at high temperatures in a vacuum, 

 has proved that the emission of electrons may be a 

 physical rather than a chemical process, and that the 

 electrons actually flow into the tungsten filament, 

 along electrical conductors, from outside the vacuum 

 bulb. He has thus furnished what is regarded as di- 

 rect experimental proof of the electron theory of 

 conduction in metals. 



It seems speaking well within bounds, therefore, 

 to say that this inconceivably minute particle, which 

 is far and away the smallest thing of which present- 

 day science has any positive knowledge, is at the 

 same time far and away the most important thing 

 in the universe. 



THE ALL-PERVADING ETHER 



As we penetrate thus far and farther into the realm 

 of the infinitely little, seeing in imagination the 

 smallest visible particle of matter resolved into 

 myriads of molecules; each molecule into sundry 

 atoms; and each atom into its teeming swarms of 



