14 Biographical Memoir of Sir Humphry Davy, 



rated on various liquids with a very powerful pile, and ob- 

 served many singular disengagements of gas. He at last en- 

 gaged in a series of profound investigations, which he pro- 

 secuted with the utmost perseverance for some years, and de- 

 finitely established the theory of this new order of phenome- 

 na. The result was published in 1806*, in a memoir, en- 

 titled Bakerian Lectures, so called because they were deliver- 

 ed in one of these foundations which are pretty numerous in 

 England, the object of which is to direct the attention of the 

 learned to certain special subjects in which the founder felt an 

 interest. After the most minute precautions, he succeeded in 

 demonstrating that, when water is pure, it is decomposed by elec- 

 tricity into gaseous matter alone, viz. into oxygen and hydrogen, 

 in the proportions in which they enter into its composition. Sub- 

 mitting to the same agent bodies of different kinds, he carried 

 to the highest degree of generalization the law of Hisinger and 

 Berzelius ; and, even reverting to the principle on which it 

 was founded, he came to the conclusion that chemical affinity is 

 nothing else than the energy of opposite powers of electricity — a 

 conclusion which, combined with another law established in 1804? 

 by Mr Dalton, on definite proportions, afforded to Berzelius prin- 

 ciples for the establishment of an entirely new system of chemistry 

 and mineralogy. 



It was for this great and important service that the Institute, 

 at its public sitting in January 1808, awarded to Mr Davy the 

 prize founded for the advancement of galvanism, an honour 

 which has not since been conferred on any one except M. Oer- 

 stedt for his brilliant discovery of the relations between galvanism 

 and electricity. Soon after, Mr Davy, by prosecuting the same 

 views, obtained a success still more flattering, because exclusively 

 his own ; I allude to the discovery of the metallic nature of 

 fixed alkalies. For a long time chemists had been struck with 



of single metallic plates and fluids, analogous to the new galvanic apparatus 

 of Volta.— /2oy. Soc. Lmd, 18th June 1801 ; Phil. Trans. voL xci. 397; Bi. 

 blioth. Bnt. voL xviL p. 237. 



• On some chemical agencies of electricity. — Roy. Soc Lond. 20th Nov. 

 1806; Phil Trans. voL xcvii. p. 1, 1807 ; Ann. de Chimie, torn. Ixiii, p. 172 

 and 225; Journal de Physique, t. Ixiv. p. 421 ; Biblioth. Brit. t. xxxv. p. 16. 



