Until now all attempts*> to find fractionally-charged particles in terrestrial and solar matter by physical and chemical methods have yielded negative results. 1 > This contrasts with a multitude of facts which quarks could explain, in case they would exist.Suppose that quark-like particles with masses of at least some tens of Ge V exist. What could be the reason for their non-observation? In our opinion the possibility that quark-like particles have escaped observation because of their in-stabili~y deserves serious attention. Clearly, such an instability, in combination with a high rest-energy, would drastically limit possibilities of observation.The lower-energy states of the hadronic spectrum are apparently triality-zero, integral-B and integral-Q states. We consider the decay of fractionally-charged to integrally-charged particles under the influence of a triality nonconserving part of the weak interaction, a specific form of which is described below. The lightest quark-like particle is generally believed to be stable due to the conservation laws of electric charge and baryon number. We suggest, *> A recent suggestion by the Sydney group2l that quarks has been observed has been questioned.8l however, that a certain type of violation of these conservation laws is not in contradiction with experimental facts but that it yields the decay of the lightest fractionally-charged particle.One specific form for a weak interaction incorporating nonconservation of B and Q will now be described. In analogy to Glashow's introduction of a weak CP operation,H we assume that this nonconservation arises as a result of a symmetry clash between weak and other interactions. We consider the possibility that the weak interaction conserves "weak baryon number" and "weak charge" UBU-1 and UQU-1 , respectively. The A.-quark, which plays a special role in SU8 violation, is supposed to be also in a prominent position in the above-mentioned symmetryclash. The unitary operator U is assumed to be a member of the Pauli group, 5 > operating on the A.-quark field alone. This is the group which induces linear transformations among the A.-quark field operators q~. (x) and li1. (x), commutes with proper Lorentz-transformations and preserves anticommutation relations. For simplicity we take U to be a member of the su2 subgroup, inducing the transformation q~.~aq~.+br 5q!, in the conventional notation Cli1. is transformed correspondingly and lai 2 +IW=l).The weak interaction considered is of the current-current form, the hadronic current being equal to +G..tr"r5)qp, (1) with the operator multiplying sin(} trans-