It is, on the average, a thousand times greater than the corresponding relation in electrolysis.

As experiment has shown, in all the circumstances where it has been possible to effect measurements, the equality of the charges carried by all corpuscules, ions, atoms, etc., we ought to consider that the charge of the electron is here, again, that of a univalent ion in electrolysis, and therefore that its mass is only a small fraction of that of the atom of hydrogen, viz., of the order of about a thousandth part.

This is the same result as that to which we were led by the study of flames.
The thorough examination of the cathode radiation, then, confirms us in the idea that every material atom can be dissociated and will yield an electron much smaller than itself--and always identical whatever the matter whence it comes,--the rest of the atom remaining charged with a positive quantity equal and contrary to that borne by the electron.

In the present case these positive ions are no doubt those that we again meet with in the canal rays.

Professor Wien has shown that their mass is really, in fact, of the order of the mass of atoms.
Although they are all formed of identical electrons, there may be various cathode rays, because the velocity is not exactly the same for all electrons.