128 Professor Faraday - [May 25, 



the anions and cations there would be no transmission of the elec- 

 tricity, and so no electrolytic conduction. But then the questions 

 arise, — Where do these elements appear ? is the water at n oxygen- 

 ated, and that about p hydrogenated ? apd may the elements be at 

 last dispersed into the air at these two points, as in the case of 

 decompositions against air poles? {Exp. Res. 455, 461, &c.) In 

 regard to such questions other considerations occur respecting the 

 particles about p and n, and the condition of charge they have 

 acquired. These have received the electricity which has passed as 

 a current through the equatorial parts, but they have had no current 

 or no proportional current through themselves — the conduction has 

 extended to them but not through them ; no electricity has passed 

 for instance through the particle at n or at p, yet more electricity 

 has gone by some kind of conduction to them than to any other of 

 the particles in the sphere. It is not consistent with our under- 

 standing of electrolytic conduction to suppose that these particles 

 have been charged by such conduction ; for in the exercise of that 

 function it is just as essential that the electricity should leave the 

 decomposing particle on the one side, as that it should go to it on 

 the other : the mere escape of oxygen and hydrogen into the air is 

 not enough to account for the result, for such escape may be freely 

 permitted in the case of electrodes plunged into water ; and yet if 

 the electricity cannot pass from the decomposing particles into the 

 electrodes, and so away by the wires, in a condition enabling it to 

 perform its full equivalent of electric work any where else in the 

 circuit, there is no decomposition at the final particles of the elec- 

 trolyte, nor any electrolytic conduction in its mass. Even in the air 

 cases above referred to there is a complete transmission of the elec- 

 tricity across the extreme particles concerned in the electrolysis. 



If the above reasoning involve no error, but be considered suffi- 

 cient to show that the particles at p and n are not electrolyzed, then 

 it is also sufficient to prove that none of the particles between p 

 and n have been electrolyzed ; for though one at e or q may have 

 had a current of electricity passed through it, it could not give up 

 its elements unless the neighbouring particles were prepared to take 

 them in a fully equivalent degree. To stop the electrolysis at n and 

 /?, or at those parts of the surface where the moving electricity 

 stops, is to stop it at all the intervening parts according to our 

 present views of electrolysis, and to stop the electrolysis is to shut 

 out electrolytic conduction ; and nothing at present remains but 

 conduction proper, to account for the very manifest effects of con- 

 duction which occur in the case. 



It may be imagined that a certain polarized state of tension occurs 

 in these cases of static induction, which is intermediate between it 

 and electrolytic conduction {Exp. Res. 1164); or that a certain 

 preparatory and as it were incomplete condition may be assumed, 

 distinguishing the case of static conduction with globes of water, 

 which I have taken as the ground of consideration from the same 



