But these forces may also be of electrical origin.  Von Helmholtz long since showed that electricity exercises an influence on the condensation of the vapour of water, and Mr C.T.R.  Wilson, with this view, has made truly quantitative experiments.  It was rapidly discovered after the apparition of the X rays that gases that have become conductors, that is, ionised gases, also facilitate the condensation of supersaturated water vapour.

We are thus led by a new road to the belief that electrified centres exist in gases, and that each centre draws to itself the neighbouring molecules of water, as an electrified rod of resin does the light bodies around it.  There is produced in this manner round each ion an assemblage of molecules of water which constitute a germ capable of causing the formation of a drop of water out of the condensation of excess vapour in the ambient air.  As might be expected, the drops are electrified, and take to themselves the charge of the centres round which they are formed; moreover, as many drops are created as there are ions.  Thereafter we have only to count these drops to ascertain the number of ions which existed in the gaseous mass.

To effect this counting, several methods have been used, differing in principle but leading to similar results.  It is possible, as Mr C.T.R.  Wilson and Professor J.J.  Thomson have done, to estimate, on the one hand, the weight of the mist which is produced in determined conditions, and on the other, the average weight of the drops, according to the formula formerly given by Sir G. Stokes, by deducting their diameter from the speed with which this mist falls; or we can, with Professor Lemme, determine the average radius of the drops by an optical process, viz. by measuring the diameter of the first diffraction ring produced when looking through the mist at a point of light.

We thus get to a very high number.  There are, for instance, some twenty million ions per centimetre cube when the rays have produced their maximum effect, but high as this figure is, it is still very small compared with the total number of molecules.  All conclusions drawn from kinetic theory lead us to think that in the same space there must exist, by the side of a molecule divided into two ions, a thousand millions remaining in a neutral state and intact.

Mr C.T.R.  Wilson has remarked that the positive and negative ions do not produce condensation with the same facility.  The ions of a contrary sign may be almost completely separated by placing the ionised gas in a suitably disposed field.  In the neighbourhood of a negative disk there remain hardly any but positive ions, and against a positive disk none but negative; and in effecting a separation of this kind, it will be noticed that condensation by negative ions is easier than by the positive.