[Footnote 3:  “It has been suggested that the extent of the dark space represents the mean free path of the molecules....  It has been pointed out by others that the extent of the dark space is really considerably greater than the mean free path of the molecules, calculated according to the ordinary way.  My measurements make it nearly twenty times as great.  This, however, is not in itself a fatal objection; for, as we have seen, the mean free path of an ion may be different from that of a molecule moving among others.”—­Schuster, Proc.  Roy.  Soc., xlvii., pp. 556-7.]

The great difference between Puluj and me lies in his statement that[4] “the matter which fills the dark space consists of mechanical detached particles of the electrodes which are charged with statically negative electricity, and move progressively in a straight direction.”

[Footnote 4:  “Physical Memoirs,” part ii., vol. i., p. 244.  The paragraph is italicized in the original.]

To these mechanically detached particles of the electrodes, “of different sizes, often large lumps,"[5] Puluj attributes all the phenomena of heat, force and phosphorescence that I from time to time have described in my several papers.

[Footnote 5:  Loc. cit., p. 242.]

Puluj objects energetically to my definition “Radiant Matter,” and then proposes in its stead the misleading term “Radiant Electrode Matter.”  I say “misleading,” for while both his and my definitions equally admit the existence of “Radiant Matter,” he drags in the hypothesis that the radiant matter is actually the disintegrated material of the poles.

Puluj declares that the phenomena I have described in high vacua are produced by his irregularly shaped lumps of radiant electrode matter.  My contention is that they are produced by radiant matter of the residual molecules of gas.

Were it not that in this case we can turn to experimental evidence, I would not mention the subject to you.  On such an occasion as this controversial matter must have no place; therefore I content myself at present by showing a few novel experiments which demonstratively prove my case.

Let me first deal with the radiant electrode hypothesis.  Some metals, it is well known, such as silver, gold or platinum, when used for the negative electrode in a vacuum tube, volatilize more or less rapidly, coating any object in their neighborhood with a very even film.  On this depends the well known method of electrically preparing small mirrors, etc.  Aluminum, however, seems exempt from this volatility.  Hence, and for other reasons, it is generally used for electrodes.

If, then, the phenomena in a high vacuum are due to the “electrode matter,” the more volatile the metal used, the greater should be the effect.[6]

[Footnote 6:  In a valuable paper read before the Royal Society, November 20, 1890, by Professors Liveing and Dewar, on finely divided metallic dust thrown off the surface of various electrodes, in vacuum tubes, they find not only that dust, however fine, suspended in a gas will not act like gaseous matter in becoming luminous with its characteristic spectrum in an electric discharge, but that it is driven with extraordinary rapidity out of the course of the discharge.]