The cathode rays are due to a kind of molecular
bombardment of the walls of the tubes, and of the screens which can be
introduced into them; and it is the molecules, electrified by their
contact with the cathode and then forcibly repelled by electrostatic
action, which produce, by their movement and their _vis viva_, all the
phenomena observed. Moreover, these electrified molecules animated
with extremely rapid velocities correspond, according to the theory
verified in the celebrated experiment of Rowland on convection
currents, to a true electric current, and can be deviated by a magnet.
Notwithstanding the success of Crookes' experiments, many physicists--
the Germans especially--did not abandon an hypothesis entirely
different from that of radiant matter. They continued to regard the
cathode radiation as due to particular radiations of a nature still
little known but produced in the luminous ether. This interpretation
seemed, indeed, in 1894, destined to triumph definitely through the
remarkable discovery of Lenard, a discovery which, in its turn, was to
provoke so many others and to bring about consequences of which the
importance seems every day more considerable.
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