1855.] on Electric Conduction. 131 



When drops of water, oppositely electrified, are made to approach 

 each other, they act by convection, i. e. as carriers of electricity ; 

 when they meet they discharge to each other, and the function 

 of conduction is for the time set up. When the water bubble, 

 described p. 5, is taken out of the sphere of induction, the opposite 

 electricities about p and n neutralize each other, being conducted 

 through the particles of the water. Are we to suppose in these 

 cases that the conduction is electrolytic ? if so, where are the con- 

 stituents separated, and where are they to appear ? It must be a 

 strong conviction that would deny conduction proper to electrolyte* 

 in these cases ; and if not denied here, what reason is there ever to 

 deny it absolutely. 



The result of all the thought I can give to the subject is a sus- 

 pended judgment. I cannot say that I think conduction proper is 

 as yet disproved in electrolytes ; and yet I cannot say that I know 

 of any case in which a current, however weak, being passed by 

 platinum electrodes across acidulated water does not bring them into 

 a polarized condition. It may be that when metallic surfaces are 

 present, they complete by their peculiarities the condition necessary 

 to the evolution of elements, which, under the same degree of 

 electrification would not be evolved if the metals were away ; and, 

 on the other hand, it also may be that after the metals are polarized, 

 and a consequent state of reactive tension so set up, a degree of con- 

 duction proper may occur between them and the electrolyte simul- 

 taneously with the electrolytic action. There is now no dcubt that 

 as regards electrolysis and its law, all is as if there were but electro- 

 lytic conduction ; but, as regards static phenomena (which are 

 equally important) and the steps of their passage into dynamic 

 effects, it is i)robable that conduction proper rules with electro- 

 lytes as with other compound bodies : for it is not as yet disproved, 

 is supported by strong presumptive evidence, and may be essential. 

 Yet so 'distant are the extremes of electric intensity, and so 

 infinitely different in an inverse direction are the quantities that 

 may and do produce the essential phenomena of each kind, that this 

 separation of conductive action may well seem perfect and entire to 

 those whose minds are inclined rather to see conduction proper 

 replaced by electrolytic conduction, than to consider it as reduced, 

 but not destroyed ; disappearing, as it were, for electricity of great 

 quantity and small intensity, but still abundantly sufficient for all 

 natural and artificial phenomena, such as those described, where in- 

 tensity and time both unite in favouring the final results required. 



But we must not dogmatise on natural principles, or decide upon 

 their physical nature without proof; and, indeed, the two modes of 

 electric action, the electrolytic and the static, are so different yet 

 each so important, the one doing all by quantity at very low 

 intensity, the other giving many of its chief results by intensity with 

 scarcely any proportionate quantity, that it would be dangerous to 

 deny too hastily the conduction proper to a few Ci\ses in static 



