Voltaic Electricity on Alcohol, &c. 329 
the power employed being usually thirty-six pairs of four-inch 
plates. On the first influence of the current, the negative gas 
from the aqueous solution sometimes increased a little faster 
than that from the alcoholic liquid, but the quantities were not 
very long in becoming equalized. When the same current was 
made to pass through alcohol of .796, holding -+, of iodide of po- 
tassium in solution, and water holding the same quantity of that 
substance dissolved, the negative tube of the former liquid was 
found to contain in three-quarters of an hour .11 of gas, and the 
negative tube of the latter .13. In a similar trial, in which one- 
fiftieth of chloride of calcium was the dissolved body, each nega- 
tive tube contained .037 of gas in the same time. The results 
with 335 of potash closely corresponded with those already 
stated as to alcohol of .802, the negative gas of the alcoholic so- 
lution collected in the tube A of Fig. 6, being in an hour and fifty 
minutes .33, and that of the aqueous .37 in the same time; and 
in another trial the proportions were very similar. The negative 
gases, when examined, were always found to be hydrogen, that 
from the alcohol being as usual mixed with a small variable pro- 
portion of common air or azote. In one instance I found this 
mixture to amount to about one-fourth part ; an equivalent ab- 
sorption of hydrogen having without doubt occurred. 
The various experiments which have been detailed, leave, I 
conceive; no doubt that water is truly the subject of the direct 
agency of the voltaic current transmitted through alcohol. 
Where the alcohol is concentrated, and holds no foreign matter in 
solution, the quantity of water decomposed even by a powerful 
stream is small, owing to the indifferent conducting power of the 
liquid. The effect on the needle of the galvanic multiplier when 
a stream of moderate power, as from fifty pairs of two-inch plates, 
was transmitted through absolute alcohol, was very trifling, but 
still perceptible. The galvanometer employed was of the origi- 
nal simple construction, consisting of a single magnetic needle, 
seven inches long, and suspended by silk fibres, in the centre of 
