strongly support the view that a large quantity of radium must exist in the surface soil of the earth. Eve found, on a minimum estimate, that the amount of emanation always present in the atmosphere is equivalent to the equilibrium amount derived from 100 tons of radium. There is every reason to believe that the emanation found in the atmosphere is supplied both by the diffusion of the emanation from the soil and by the action of springs. Since the emanation loses half its activity in four days, it cannot diffuse from any great depth. Assuming that the radium is uniformly distributed throughout the earth, the quantity of the radium emanation produced in a thin shell of earth about thirteen metres in depth, is sufficient to account for the amount ordinarily observed in the atmosphere.
I think we may conclude that the present rate of loss of heat of the earth might have continued unchanged for long periods of time in consequence of the supply of heat from radio-active matter in the earth. It thus seems probable that the earth may have remained for very long intervals of time at a temperature not very different from that observed to-day, and that, in consequence, the time during which the earth has been at a temperature capable of supporting the presence of animal and vegetable life may be very much longer than the estimate made by Lord Kelvin from other data.
272. Evolution of matter. Although the hypothesis that
all matter is composed of some elementary unit of matter or
protyle has been advanced as a speculation at various times
by many prominent physicists and chemists, the first definite
experimental evidence showing that the chemical atom was
not the smallest unit of matter was obtained in 1897 by
J. J. Thomson in his classic research on the nature of the
cathode rays produced by an electric discharge in a vacuum
tube. We have seen that Sir William Crookes, who was the first
to demonstrate the remarkable properties of these rays, had
suggested that they consisted of streams of projected charged
matter and represented—as he termed it—a new or "fourth state
of matter."
J. J. Thomson showed by two distinct methods (section 50),
