Excitement of Galvanic Electricity. 807 
source is’ assigned of that electricity which 
gives energy to the apparatus. In other 
words we perceive, in such a process, nothing 
more than a constant disturbance of the 
balance of electricity by the action of the 
plates, and an immediate renewal of it by 
the agency of the chemical fluids. Accord- 
ing to the hypothesis, the production and 
annihilation of Galvanie energy are carried 
on in a circle, leaving unexplained that im- 
mense evolution of electricity, which is ma- 
nifested by the most striking effects, both in 
oceasioning the combustion of bodies, and in 
disuniting. the most refractory compounds. 
© On the whole, the electromotive power of 
the plates, and the chemical agency of the 
interposed fluids, appear to be the only circum- 
stances, that can be brought to explain the 
efficiency of the Galvanic pile. To decide 
which is to be considered as the cause, and 
which as the effect, is a difficulty not peculiar 
to this case, but common to every other, where 
two events, that are invariably connected, are 
not distinguished by an appreciable interval of 
time. The most defensible view of the subject 
however, seems to me to be that, which attri- 
butes the primary excitement of electricity to 
the chemical changes. But it may be ques- 
tioned whether the whole of the effect arises 
aq? 
