Scaling law for the electromagnetic form factors of the proton

The violation of the scaling law for the electric and magnetic form factors of the proton is examined within the cloudy bag model. We find that the suppression of the ratio of the electric and magnetic form factors is natural in the relativistic bag model. The pion cloud plays a moderate role in moving the ratio towards unity at low momentum transfer. The scaling violation increases as the momentum transfer increases because of the rapid drop of the pionic contribution. Our result is in reasonable agreement with the recent data from TJNAF. (author). Letter-to-the-editor