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XXXIII. Researches into the Cause of Voltaic Electricity. By 

 Mons. Auguste. De la Rive, Rector and Professor of 

 Natural Philosophy of the Academy of Geneva, Correspond- 

 ing Member of the Academy of Sciences of Paris.* 

 Abstract. 

 A T the commencement of 1828f, in a memoir entitled, 

 **■ Analysis of the circumstances which determine the direction 

 and intensity of the electric currents in a voltaic pair, I showed 

 by several experiments the impossibility of explaining the pro- 

 duction of voltaic electricity by the theory of contact, and the 

 necessity for having recourse to chemical action. At the end 

 of the same year I published an abstract of the researches 

 which form the subject of this article, in the Annates de Chimie 

 et de Physique^, which appeared in three parts in the memoirs 

 of the Societede Physique et d'Histoire Naturelle of Geneva, in 

 1829, 1832, and 1835. These three parts, especially the last, 

 were enriched with new facts not contained in the abstract which 

 I had given in 1828 ; but the principles were then stated, and 

 the new details that I added have only had the effect of proving 

 their exactitude. Thus in 1828, that is long before the labours 

 of Messrs. Ohm, Fechner, and Faraday, I had already given 

 the theory of the pile, founding it upon principles which have 

 been confirmed by the important researches of the physicists 

 whom I have just mentioned. But I ought to acknowledge 

 that these researches, particularly those of Mr. Faraday, have 

 led not only to the discovery of new laws of great value, but 

 in addition, have given, by the discovery of those laws, a more 

 solid basis to the chemical theory of the pile than was afforded 

 by my own labours. As my memoir forms a volume of 170 

 pages, and consequently cannot be inserted entire in a scientific 

 journal, I have endeavoured to give an abstract of it, as com- 

 plete as is possible, for the Philosophical Magazine, and I have 

 taken advantage of this circumstance to add to it a few facts 

 which I have not hitherto had an opportunity of publishing. 



explanation of the principles upon which the che- 

 mical THEORY OF VOLTAIC ELECTRICITY IS, IN PART, 

 FOUNDED. 



Principle I. — No electricity is developed by two bodies in 

 contact when they do not undergo any chemical action, provided 

 that there is likewise an absence of calorific and mechanical 

 action. 



This principle, in support of which I produced a great num- 



* Communicated by the Author. 



f Annates de Chimie et de Physique, vol. xxxvii. p. 225. 



t Ibid., vol. xxxix. p. 2&J. 



