But this means has now been supplied in the discovery of the X rays.

Suppose we pass through some gas at ordinary pressure, such as hydrogen, a pencil of X rays.
The gas, which till then has behaved as a perfect insulator,[29] suddenly acquires a remarkable conductivity.

If into this hydrogen two metallic electrodes in communication with the two poles of a battery are introduced, a current is set up in very special conditions which remind us, when they are checked by experiments, of the mechanism which allows the passage of electricity in electrolysis, and which is so well represented to us when we picture to ourselves this passage as due to the migration towards the electrodes, under the action of the field, of the two sets of ions produced by the spontaneous division of the molecule within the solution.
[Footnote 29: At least, so long as it is not introduced between the two coatings of a condenser having a difference of potential sufficient to overcome what M.Bouty calls its dielectric cohesion.

We leave on one side this phenomenon, regarding which M.Bouty has arrived at extremely important results by a very remarkable series of experiments; but this question rightly belongs to a special study of electrical phenomena which is not yet written.] Let us therefore recognise with J.J.Thomson and the many physicists who, in his wake, have taken up and developed the idea of Giese, that, under the influence of the X rays, for reasons which will have to be determined later, certain gaseous molecules have become divided into two portions, the one positively and the other negatively electrified, which we will call, by analogy with the kindred phenomenon in electrolysis, by the name of ions.

If the gas be then placed in an electric field, produced, for instance, by two metallic plates connected with the two poles of a battery respectively, the positive ions will travel towards the plate connected with the negative pole, and the negative ions in the contrary direction.