affinities. 



ON SOME CHEMICAL AGENCIES oE ELECTRICITY. 53 



"Whenever bodies brought by artificial means into a high Relations be- 

 state of opposite electricities are made to restore the eqiiili- trTcaTener^ies* 

 brium, heat and light are the common consequences. It is of bodies and 

 perhaps an additional circumstance in favour of the theory * 

 to state, that heat and light are always the result of all in- 

 tense chemical action. And as in certain forms of the 

 Voltaic battery, where large quantities of electricity of low 

 intensity act, heat is produced without light; so in slow- 

 combinations there is an increase of temperature without 

 luminous appearance. 



The effect of heat, in producing combination, maybe easily 

 explained according to these ideas. It not only often gives 

 more freedom of uiotion to the particles, but in a number 

 of cases it seems to exalt the electrical energies of bodies; 

 glass, the tourmalin, sulphur, all afford familiar instances of 

 this last species of energy. 



I heated together an insulated plate of copper and a plate 

 of sulphur, and examined their electricities as their temper- 

 ature became elevated: these electricites, scarcely sensible 

 at 5()° Fahrenheit to the condensing electrometer, became 

 at 100° Fahrenheit capable of affecting the gold leaves* 

 without condensation; they increased in a still higher ratio 

 as the sulphur approached towards its point of fusion. At 

 a little above this point, as is well known from the experi- 

 ments of the Dutch chemists, the two substances rapidly 

 combine, and heat and light are evident. 



Similar effects may be conceived to occur in the case of 

 oxlgen and hidrogen, which form water, a body apparently 

 neutral in electrical energy to most other substances: and 

 we may reasonably conclude that there is the same exalta- 

 tion of power, in all cases of combustion. In general, when 

 the different energies are strong and in perfect equilibrium, 

 the combination ought to be quick, the heat and light in- 

 tense, and the new compound in a neutral state. This 

 would seem to be the case in the instance just quoted ; and 

 in the circumstances of the nnion of the strong alkalis and 

 acids. But where one energy is feeble and the other strong, 



inferiority of effect as compared with that $>f amianthus made me alto- 

 gether relinquish the ujc of them. 



all 



