8 Biographical account of 



even amid the bleakness and wildness of the least favoured 

 of nature's scenes. 



For some years, he appears to have made no original 

 discoveries, or at least, his laboratory labours were not at- 

 tended with any striking results. Electricity constituted 

 at the commencement of the century a fruitful field for 

 investigation. The pile of Volta had opened the way to 

 many curious discoveries ; but want of care led to some 

 strange deductions ; the pile was actually supposed to gene- 

 rate muriatic acid and alkali in water ; because these sub- 

 stances were obviously present when water was made to 

 complete the circuit. Our author turned his attention to 

 this curious question. ** It was in the beginning of 1806," 

 says he, ** that I attempted the solution of the question, 

 and after some months' labour, I presented to the society the 

 dissertation, to which I have referred in the beginning of 

 the lecture. Finding that acid and alkaline substances, 

 even when existing in the most solid combinations, or in 

 the smallest proportions in the hardest bodies, were elicited 

 by voltaic electricity, I established that they were the re- 

 sults of decomposition, and not of composition or genera- 

 tion. I drew the conclusion, that the combinations and de- 

 compositions by electricity were referable to the law of electri- 

 cal attractions and repulsions, and advanced the hypothesis 

 that chemical and electrical attraction were produced by 

 the same cause, acting in one case on particles, in the other on 

 masses, and that the same property under different modifica- 

 tions was the cause of all phenomena exhibited by different 

 voltaic combinations'' 



The paper which developed the deductions from his ex- 

 periments was in reality a noble one. It *' constitutes," says 

 Dr. Thomson, '* one of the most important contributions ever 

 made to scientific chemistry, and threw a ray of light upon 

 chemical affinity which may ultimately produce the most 

 important consequences." To this paper the French Insti- 

 tute awarded the prize founded by Napoleon for the most 

 important discoveries in galvanism. The researches de- 

 scribed in this memoir were quite original, and were carried 

 on without the most distant connexion with any experi- 

 ments conducted by others. The claims, therefore, of 

 some continental chemists to supersede him are quite futile. 

 The observation of Dr. Davy is perfectly correct. The 



