THE 

 LONDON, EDINBURGH axnd DUBLIN 



PHILOSOPHICAL MAGAZINE 



AND 



JOURNAL OF SCIENCE, 



[FOURTH SERIES.] 



OCTOBER 1853. 



XXXVI. On the Electro -chemical Deportment of Oxygen. 



By M. ViARD* 



[With a Plate.] 



TN 1801, a year only after the discovery of the battery, Pepys 

 demonstrated that when a battery was placed in air, an 

 absorption of oxygen took place, and that the current showed a 

 tendency to cease when nitrogen alone remained. 



Since then, Biot and Cuvier, De la Rive, Joule, and Adie 

 have successively demonstrated this same influence of oxygen. 



This class of experiments may be considered as having formed 

 one of the principal bases of the electro-chemical theory ; and 

 for a long time oxygen by its presence was supposed to act on 

 the positive plate, in that it there produced oxidation. 



Nevertheless, Grove having shown that in a gas battery 

 the platinum plate placed in the hydrogen could be replaced by 

 a plate of zinc without thereby causing the absorption of oxygen 

 on the other platinum plate to cease, it was necessary at once to 

 admit that oxygen could play a different part to the one hitherto 

 assigned it. In the Edinburgh New Philosophical Magazine, 

 January and October 1848, and in the third volume of the Philo- 

 sophical Magazine, (S. 4) Adie corroborated the same facts in a 

 still more forcible manner, and endeavoured to show, that, contrary 

 to the received opinion, oxygen by its presence acted only upon 

 the negative plate. Amongst other experiments hereafter to be 

 mentioned, he cites the remarkable one, that when a plate of zinc, 

 entirely immersed in an electrolyte, is opposed to a plate of zinc 

 in partial contact with oxygen, the latter, and not the former, 

 is rendered negative. 



* From the Annates de Chimie et de Physique, vol. xxxvi. p. 129. 

 Phil. Mag. S. 4. Vol. 6. No. 39. Oct. 1853. R 



