CHEMICAL SCIENCE. 



ON THE DEPENDENCE OF THE CHEMICAL PROPERTIES OF COM- 

 POUNDS UPON THE ELECTRICAL CHARACTER OF THEIR CON- 

 STITUENTS. 



THE following is an abstract of a lecture recently delivered before the 



Royal Institution, (London,) by Mr. Frankland, on the above subject : 



The lecturer first directed attention to the remarkable continuity and 



V 



correlation of the natural forces, owing to which, the philosopher seeking 

 to eliminate the effects legitimately due to each frequently experienced 

 the greatest difficulty in separating the true results of a single force from 

 the cognate influence of other forces. Such difficulties were more 

 especially encountered in the manifestations of the chemical force or 

 chemical affinity, which rarely or never acted singly and alone, but was 

 constantly accompanied, modified, and controlled by collateral forces, which 

 alternately exalted, depressed, or altogether inverted it. The powerful 

 influence of cohesion and he^t especially attracted the attention of Ber- 

 thollet, and so impressed that profound philosopher with their potency as 

 to lead him to ignore completely the existence of a separate chemical force. 

 Notwithstanding the otherwise singularly ingenious and sound conclusions 

 of this chemist, the lecturer believed that later researches had demon- 

 strated the total denial of a distinct chemical force to be untenable. The 

 influence of electricity upon chemical affinity was, perhaps, even still 

 greater than that of cohesion or heat ; the most powerful combinations 

 being broken up by this agent, if its operations were favored by the two 

 conditions mobility of particles, (fluidity,) and conductibility of the 

 electric current. The phenomenon of the evolution of the separate 

 elements of a binary compound, at the opposite poles of the decomposing 

 cell, was one of the most remarkable attending the resolution of com- 

 pounds into their elements by the electrical force. This forced upon 

 philosophers the conclusion, that such elements Avere oppositely electrified. 

 Davy was the first to seize upon these facts and model them into an electro- 

 chemical theory, which, notwithstanding its defects, was at least as soundly 

 philosophical as those which succeeded it. Davy supposed that the 

 elements in their uncombined condition did not contain free electricity, but 



