1854.) OF THE ROYAL INSTITUTION. 451 
WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 
Friday, June 2. 
Wiu1am Rosert Grove, Esa., Q.C., F.R.S., Vice-President, 
in the Chair. 
Dr. E. FRaNKLAND, F.R.S. 
On the dependance of the Chemical properties of Compounds upon the 
Electrical character of their constituents. 
Tue Lecturer first directed attention to the remarkable continuity 
and correlation of the natural forces, owing to which, the phi- 
losopher, seeking to eliminate the effects legitimately due to each, 
frequently experienced the greatest difficulty in separating the true 
results of a single force, from the cognate influence of other 
forces. Such difficulties were more especially encountered in the 
manifestations of the chemical force or chemical affinity, which 
rarely or never acted singly and alone, but was constantly accom- 
panied, modified, and controlled, by collateral forces, which alter- 
nately exalted, depressed, or altogether inverted it. 
The powerful influence of cohesion and heat especially attracted 
the attention of Berthollet, and so impressed that profound philoso- 
pher with their potency, as to lead him to ignore completely the 
existence of a separate chemical force. Notwithstanding the other- 
wise singularly ingenious and sound conclusions of this chemist, 
the Lecturer believed that later researches had demonstrated the 
total denial of a distinct chemical force to be untenable. 
The influence of electricity upon chemical affinity was perhaps 
even still greater than that of cohesion or heat; the most power- 
ful combinations being broken up by this agent, if its operations 
were favoured by the two conditions — mobility of particles (fluidity), 
and conductibility of the electric current. The phenomenon of 
the evolution of the separate elements of a binary compound, at 
the opposite poles of the decomposing cell, was one of the most 
remarkable attending the resolution of compounds into their elements 
by the electrical force. It immediately attracted the attention of 
philosophers, and almost forced upon them the conclusion, that such 
elements were oppositely electrified, 
Davy was the first to seize upon these facts and model them 
into an electro-chemical theory, which, notwithstanding its defects, 
was at least as soundly philosophical as those which succeeded 
it. Davy supposed that the elements in their uncombined con- 
dition did not contain free electricity, but that by contact they 
