-1859] WRITINGS OF JOSEPH HENRY. 87 



small quantity of ordinary potash, and submitting it to the 

 current of a powerful galvanic battery, observed a number 

 of brilliant particles burning and exploding on the surface. 

 With the intuitive perception of a highly philosophical 

 mind, he saw at once in this experiment a fact of the deep- 

 est significance, — the verification of a previous a priori 

 hypothesis, namely, that potash and the other alkalies and 

 alkaline earths were not simple substances, as they had pre- 

 viously been considered, but metals compounded with oxy- 

 gen. This discovery, which had an important bearing on 

 the whole science of chemistry but which had no interest 

 for the popular mind, has in the course of time, revolution- 

 ized many of the processes of art, and will furnish the means, 

 in various ways, of adding to the comforts and conveniences 

 of life. Within the last two years a French chemist has dis- 

 covered a process of decomposing one of these alkaline 

 earths, (namely, the clay which forms the basis of the soil 

 of the farmer, and which liardened by fire constitutes the 

 brick to build his tenement,) and of obtaining from it a metal 

 as light as glass, as malleable and ductile as copper, and as 

 little liable to rust as silver.* These discoveries were made 

 by men whose lives were devoted to the abstract study of 

 nature ; they were not the results of arrident, but were logical 

 deductions from previous conceptions of the mind verified 

 and further developed by the ingenious processes of the 

 laboratory. It may be safely said, that for every one indi- 

 vidual who is capable of making discoveries of this kind, 

 there are at least a thousand who can apply them to useful 

 purposes in the arts, and who will be stimulated to under- 

 take enterprises founded upon them by the more -"-^neral 

 and powerful incentive of pecuniar}'" reward. When the 

 process of procuring aluminum (or the metal from clay) 

 shall have been perfected, and some enterprising citizen 

 shall have established a great manufactory for the production 

 of the article for general use, he will confer a benefit on 

 his country, be entitled to credit, and will probably re- 



* [Aluminum though first separated by Woehler in 1828, and more per- 

 fectly in 1845, was first made available by Deville in 1855.] 



