2o8 SCIENCE AND METHOD. 



cathode, in the opposite direction from that of the 

 cathode rays, and it will become possible to study 

 them. It is thus that we have been enabled to 

 demonstrate their positive charge and to show that 

 the magnetic and electric deviations still exist, as 

 in the case of the cathode rays, though they are much 

 weaker. 



Radium likewise emits rays similar to the canal- 

 rays, and relatively very absorbable, which are called 

 a rays. 



As in the case of the cathode rays, we can measure 

 the two deviations and deduce the velocity and the 

 proportion e. The results are less constant than in 

 the case of the cathode rays, but the velocity is lower, 

 as is also the proportion e. The positive corpuscles 

 are less highly charged than the negative corpuscles ; 

 or if, as is more natural, we suppose that the charges 

 are equal and of opposite sign, the positive corpuscles 

 are much larger. These corpuscles, charged some 

 positively and others negatively, have been given the 

 name of electrons.^ 



IV. 



LoRENTz's Theory. 



But the electrons do not only give evidence of 

 their existence in these rays in which they appear 



* The name is now applied only to the negative corpuscles, which 

 seem to possess no actual mass and only a fictitious electro-magnetic 

 mass, and not to the canal-rays, which appear to consist of ordinary 

 chemical atoms positively charged, owing to the fact that they have 

 lost one or more of the electrons they possess in their ordinary neutral 

 state. 



