818 On Mr Faraday's Experimental Researches. 



that the Philosophical Transactions ought to be devoted rather 

 to objects of original research than to any thing bearing the cha- 

 racter of controversial writing. 



Relative to the first quotation, given from the Elements of 

 Chemical Philosophy, respecting which Mr Faraday expresses 

 surprise, comparing it with what my brother had observed ele- 

 ven years before of the conducting power of fused nitre and 

 paustic potash and soda, there appears to me to be no inconsis- 

 tency, and consequently nothing remarkable. In the passage 

 referred to, the subject under consideration is not the power of 

 bodies to conduct voltaic electricity, but the nature of construc- 

 tion of voltaic batteries, such as were then known and in use, 

 ' — the instrument, not the principle of action. If the passage 

 be read in this sense, limited, as I conceive it was intended, 

 there is, as I have before observed, nothing discordant with the 

 facts relative to the known conducting power of the fused 

 substances. And confirmation of this sense, it appears to me, 

 is afforded in the second quotation from " The Elements," con- 

 cerning the decomposition of bodies by electricity, such as con- 

 sist of water, oxygen, and inflammable or metallic matter in fu- 

 sion. Their decomposition in the manner noticed, imphes con- 

 ducting power, and of course a knowledge of that power being 

 possessed by them when rendered liquid by heat. And, that 

 ray brother was fully possessed of this knowledge, is clear to 

 demonstration from his writings generally, and especially from 

 what he advances in his last Bakerian Lecture, that for 1826. 

 I shall quote the whole passage, of which Mr Faraday has gi-" 

 ven only a part, especially as my brother in it expressly opposes 

 a current opinion relative to the influence of water in voltaic 

 combinations, which Mr Faraday himself has combated, but in 

 a manner to give the idea that it was defended by my brother, 

 and peculiarly his. The passage is the following : 



" As most of the fluids which act powerfully in voltaic com- 

 binations contain vvatei', or oxygen and hydrogen, it has been 

 suspected that these principles were essential to the effect ; this, 

 however, does not seem to be the case, for I found zinc and 

 platinum formed powerful electro-motive circles in fused li- 

 tharge, and fused oxy-chlorate of potassa, which are not known 

 to contain water ; and (he continues) I have httle doubt that 

 similar effects would be produced by other fused salts contain- 



