It is right to add that some authors, notwithstanding the proved
impossibility of deviating them in a magnetic field, have not
renounced the idea of comparing them with the cathode rays. They
suppose, for instance, that the rays are formed by electrons animated
with so great a velocity that their inertia, conformably with theories
which I shall examine later, no longer permit them to be stopped in
their course; this is, for instance, the theory upheld by Mr
Sutherland. We know, too, that to M. Gustave Le Bon they represent the
extreme limit of material things, one of the last stages before the
vanishing of matter on its return to the ether.
Everyone has heard of the N rays, whose name recalls the town of
Nancy, where they were discovered. In some of their singular
properties they are akin to the X rays, while in others they are
widely divergent from them.
M. Blondlot, one of the masters of contemporary physics, deeply
respected by all who know him, admired by everyone for the penetration
of his mind, and the author of works remarkable for the originality
and sureness of his method, discovered them in radiations emitted from
various sources, such as the sun, an incandescent light, a Nernst
lamp, and even bodies previously exposed to the sun's rays.
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