ar = 
Voltaic Electricity on Alcohol, &c. 347 
oxygen must combine with potassium, and liberate the electro- 
negative constituent of the haloid salt. If in the latter condi- 
tion, then it will unite with the hydrogen of the acid of the dis- 
solved salt and liberate the other element. Either view will ex- 
plain the appearance of the chlorine or iodine. 
It is evident that we can easily explain, conformably to these 
views of the secondary origin of chlorine and other analogous 
substances in solutions of the hydracids and haloid salts, the 
greater facility with which it has been observed that some of 
such solutions are decomposed, than water acidulated with an 
oxyacid. The attraction of the element with which the nascent 
oxygen, or in the case of ordinary metallic solutions, the nascent 
hydrogen, combines, will aid the electric action ; and the more 
feeble the existing combination of that element, the less will its 
union with the nascent oxygen or hydrogen be opposed, and 
the more will the voltaic agency be facilitated. 
We can also explain, in a more satisfactory manner, on these 
views, that on the idea of the primary origin of the chlorine, the 
known fact, that in strong solutions of muriatic acid or of chlorides, 
chlorine separates at the positive pole with scarcely any accom- 
paniment of oxygen, whilst in weak solutions of these bodies a 
mixture of these gases is liberated. When the nascent oxygen 
finds around it abundance of the dissolved body, it enters wholly 
into the new combination ; but in weak solutions the overplus is 
liberated along with the chlorine produced. Analogous views 
apply to the combinations of iodine. 
If the above views as to the haloid salts are well founded, it 
follows that the appearance of hydrogen in definite quantity in 
the voltaic decomposition of solutions of those salts is only, as in 
the case of the hydracids, another example of the definite decom- 
position of water. 
It is therefore to the experiments on dry substances that we 
must look for the proof of the application of the principle to 
other bodies. On such substances I have made no experiments, 
VOL. XIII. PART II. yy 
