324 THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 



will not pass over without due consideration. For 

 most of the elements the displacement of the lines 

 is about the same for all the lines. The elements 

 copper, silver, and gold, however, behave in a very 

 anomalous fashion, so that the change of the spec- 

 trum of gold to that of silver is by no means, in 

 the present state of our knowledge, to be looked for 

 as the result of these facts, but to be more akin to 

 that of the transformation of uranium into helium. 



The effect of these large molecular groups is to 

 load, as it were, the electrons and thereby alter 

 their free periods, but, as a matter of fact, what 

 would really occur is that the period of rotation of 

 the rotating electrons is lowered or increased by 

 the approach of a corpuscle to it. The distance 

 at which the corpuscles will remain attached to 

 the atom is that which will determine the period 

 of the internal rotating system. 



Consequently, the increase of pressure in a gas 

 favours the formation of these centres of attraction, 

 and thereby a lowering of the frequency of the 

 internal rotation in the atom. 



In the case of phosphorus in gases at low 

 pressure, however, the large molecules are formed 

 by the discharge of electricity through the gas, 

 whilst in order that the phosphorescence should be 

 produced, the corpuscles must be made to pass 

 through a certain distance under the attraction of 

 the molecules before they can acquire the necessary 

 velocity to do the work required. 



If the gas in a vacuum tube be exposed to the 



