334 DriHare'snew Galvanic Apparatus, Theory, &;€, [May, 



a piece of pure hydrate of potash, situated on a silver tray in 

 connexion with the other pole. The potash became red-hot, 

 and was deflagrated rapidly with a flame having the rosy hue of 

 potassuretted hydrogen. • 



The great apparatus of the Royal Institution, in projectile, 

 power, was from six to eight times more potent than mine. lb 

 produced a discharge between charcoal points when removed 

 about four inches apart, whereas mine will not produce a jet at 

 more than three-fourths of an inch. But that was a series of 

 12000 pairs ; mine is only about a twenty-fifth part as large. 



A steel wire of about one-tenth of an inch in diameter affixed 

 to the negative pole was passed up through the axis of an open 

 necked inverted bell glass filled with water. A platina wire, 

 Wo. 16, attached to a positive pole, being passed down to the 

 steel wire, both were fused together, and cooling, could not be 

 separated by manual force. Immediately after this incorpora- 

 tion of their extremities, the platina wire became incandescent 

 for a space of some inches above the surface of the water. 



A piece of silvered paper, about two inches square, was 

 folded up, the metaUic surface outward, and fr,stened into vices 

 affixed to the poles. Into each vice a wire was screwed at the 

 same time. The fluid generated by the apparatus was not per- 

 ceptibly conveyed by the silvered paper, as it did not prevent the 

 wires severally attached to the poles from decomposing water, or 

 producing ignition by contact. 



In my memoir on my theory of galvanism, I suggested that 

 the decomposition of water, which Wollaston effected by mecha- 

 nical electricity, might not be the effect of divellent attraction 

 like those excited by the poles of a voltaic pile, but of a mecha- 

 nical concussion, as when wires are dispersed by the discharge 

 of an electrical battery. In support of that opinion, I will now 

 observe, that he could not prevent hydrogen and oxygen from 

 being extricated at each wire, instead of hydrogen being given 

 oflT only at one, and oxygen at the other, as is invariably the 

 case when the voltaic pile is employed. That learned and inge- 

 nious philosopher, in concluding his account of this celebrated 

 experiment, says, " but in fact the resemblance is not complete, 

 for in every way in which I have tried it, I observed each wire 

 gave out both oxygen and hydrogen gas, instead of their being 

 formed separately as by the electric pile." 



Is it not reasonable to suppose that an electrical shock may 

 dissipate any body into its elementary atoms, whether simple or 

 compound, so that no two particles would be left together which 

 can be separated by physical means. 



Looking over Singer's Electricity, a recent and most able 

 modern publication, I find that in the explosion of brass wire by 

 an electrical battery, the copper and zinc actually separated. 

 He says, page 186, " Brass wire is sometimes decomposed by 

 the charge ; the copper and zinc of which it is formed being 



