Alare’s New Galvanic Apparatus, Theory, &c. aie 
A piece of silvered paper about two inches square was 
folded up, the metallic surface outward, and fastened into 
vices affixed to the poles. Into each vice a wire was screw- 
ed at the same time. The fluid generated by the apparatus 
was not perceptibly nenteyes by the silvered paper, as it 
did not prevent the wires severally attached to the poles 
from a water or producing ignition by contact. 
my memoir on my theory of galvanism I supzerteds 
that the Prerengee of water, which Wollaston effected 
by mechanical electricity, might not be the effect of divel- 
lent attraction like those excited by the poles of a voltaic 
pile, but of a mechanical concussion, as when wires are dis- 
persed by the discharge of an electrical battery. io Esepport 
vent : e 
wire, instead of hydrogen nase given off only at one, and 
oxygen at the other, as is invariably the case when the vol- 
taic pile is employed. That learned and ingenious philoso- 
pher, in concluding his account of this celebrated experi- 
ment, says “ but in fact the resemblance is not complete, 
for in every way in which IJ have tried it, I observed each 
—_ gave out ae oxygen and hydrogen gas, instead of 
—— forme: d separately as by the electric pile.’ 
As it : 
may Tinsipate any body into its elementary atoms, whether 
simple or compound, so that no two particles would. becteft 
— r which can be separated by physical means. — 
king over Singer’s Electricity, a recent and most 
able modern publication, I find that in the explosion of brass 
wire by an electrical battery, the copper and zinc actually 
separated. He says, page 186, “‘ Brass wire is sometimes 
decomposed by the charge ; the copper and zine of which it 
is formed being separated from each other, and appearing in 
their distinet metallic colours.” On the next page in the 
same work, = find that the oxides of mercury and tin are 
reduced, by. electrical discharges. ‘‘ Introduce,” says the 
thor, “ some oxide of tin into a glass tube, so that when 
wires into its opposite ends, that the portion of oxide ‘may 
lie between them. Pass: several. strong charges in sucees- 
