THE 

 LONDON, EDINBURGH, and DUBLIN 



PHILOSOPHICAL MAGAZINE 



AND 



JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 



r c 





[SIXTH SERIES] 



NO V EMBER 1915. 







LXIX. The Electron Theory in Organic Chemistry. By 

 N. P. McCleland, M.A., Pembroke College, Cambridge ; 

 3rd Battalion, The Queen s Own, Royal West Kent 

 Regiment *. 



THIS paper has been written under conditions which 

 have rendered it impossible to quote any references 

 or to carry the mathematical investigation of the points 

 examined to any complexity. It should be looked on as a 

 preliminary investigation of some interesting points which 

 deserve more close examination; and the author would be 

 very glad if anyone would take this in hand. 



1. In a previous paper (Phil. Mag. xxix. p. 192) the 

 author endeavoured to explain the absorption of light by 

 organic substances by means of a certain model of the atom. 

 It was surmised that an atom consists of a positively 

 charged nucleus round which valency electrons move in 

 circular orbits. The electrons in the outer ring were called 

 primary, those in the next secondary, and so on. 



When valencies become saturated in the formation of 

 molecules, the corresponding electrons are, it is suggested, 

 withdrawn from their original orbits, one from each atom, 

 probably into one of greater radius about the line joining the 

 nuclei of the two combining atoms. These electrons, moving 

 in the same orbit, form the link between the residues of the 



* Communicated by Sir J. J. Thomson, O.M., F.R.S. 

 Phil. Mag. S. 6. Vol. 30. No. 179. Nov. 1915. 2 X 



