sufficient to answer this question, but undoubted proof has been obtained that many of the metals show a very feeble radio-activity. Whether this radio-activity is due to the presence of a slight trace of the radio-elements or is an actual property of the metals themselves will be discussed in more detail in section 286.
Schuster[1] has pointed out that every physical property hitherto discovered for one element has been found to be shared by all the others in varying degrees. For example, the property of magnetism is most strongly marked in iron, nickel, and cobalt, but all other substances are found to be either feebly magnetic or diamagnetic. It might thus be expected on general principles that all matter should exhibit the property of radio-activity in varying degrees. On the view developed in chapter X., the presence of this property is an indication that the matter is undergoing change accompanied by the expulsion of charged particles. It does not, however, by any means follow that because the atom of one element in the course of time becomes unstable and breaks up, that, therefore, the atoms of all the other elements pass through similar phases of instability.
It has already been mentioned (section 8), that Mme Curie made a very extensive examination of most of the elements and their compounds for radio-activity. The electric method was used, and any substance possessing an activity of 1/100 of that of uranium would certainly have been detected. With the exception of the known radio-elements and the minerals containing uranium and thorium, no other substances were found to be radio-active even to that degree.
Certain substances like phosphorus[2] possess the property of ionizing a gas under special conditions. The air which is drawn over the phosphorus is conducting, but it has not yet been settled whether this conductivity is due merely to ions formed at the surface of the phosphorus or to ions produced by the phosphorus nuclei or emanations, as they have been termed, which are carried along with the current of air. It does not however appear that the ionization of the gas is in any way due to the presence of a penetrating type of radiation such as is emitted by the radio-*
