and physical properties which exists in many cases between the various products themselves, and also between the primary active substance and its products, has already been drawn attention to in chapter IX. Some of the products show distinctive electro-chemical behaviour and can be removed from a solution by electrolysis. Others show differences in volatility which have been utilized to effect a partial separation. There can be no doubt that each of these products is a definite new chemical substance, and if it could be collected in sufficient quantity to be examined by ordinary chemical means, would be found to behave like a distinct chemical element. It would differ, however, from the ordinary chemical element in the shortness of its life, and the fact that it is continuously changing into another substance. We shall see later (section 261) that there is every reason to believe that radium itself is a metabolon in the true sense of the term, since it is continuously changing, and is itself produced from another substance. The main point of difference between it and the other products lies in the comparative slowness of its rate of change.
It is for this reason that radium exists in pitchblende in greater quantity than the other