4 
4i4 Experimenis on the Substances produced 
The phenomena of the Voltaic electrization of fluorie 
acid present no evidences in favour of its containing a pe- 
culiar combustible substance and oxygen; and the most 
simple mode of explaining them 1s by supposing the fluoric 
acid, like muriatic acid, composed of hydrogen, and a sub- 
stance, as yet unknown, in a separate form, possessed, like 
oxygen and chlorine, of the negative electrical energy, and 
hence determined to the positive surface, and strongly at- 
tracted by metallic substances. 
This view is much more conformable to the general or- 
der of chemical and electrical facts than the third hypo- 
thesis, just now mentioned. 
It is indeed possible to conceive, if the metals be regarded 
as compounds of hydrogen, that the hydrogen may be pro- 
duced from the metal, positively electrified at the time that 
the acid combines with its supposed basis, and that this 
hydrogen may be transferred to the negative surface: but 
this supposition involves a multitude of others; and the 
results of the electrization of fluoric acid are analogous to 
most of the results of the electrization of water and muri- 
atic acid, both of which are shown by analysis and synthesjs 
to be compounds of hydrogen; and in the electrical de- 
composition of these bodies, their characteristic element is 
generally combined with the positive metallic surface. 
In the Bakerian Lecture for 1810 I have given an account 
of the action of potassium upon pure silica. In this pro- 
cess, the potassium acquires oxygen; and a combustible 
substance, which consists either of the basis of silica, or 
the basis of silica combined with potassium, appears. In 
supposing the silicated fluoric acid gas to be composed of 
this basis and the fluoric principle, it is easy to explain the 
action of potassium upon it, and the complicated phe- 
nomena, occasioned by the agency of water, and acids, 
and oxygen, on the results of this action. The potassium 
must be conceived to attract a part of the fluoric principle 
from the siliceous basis, or to form a triple compound, from: 
which silicated fluoric acid gas is capable of being repro- 
duced, in consequence of the combination of a part of the 
potassium and siliceous basis with oxygen; and on this 
idea the cause of the apparent loss of the fluoric principle, 
in the experiments on the action of ammohia on the pro- 
duct of the combustion of potassium in silicated fluoric acid 
gas, becomes obvious. 
Assuming then from the analogy with chlorine, that the 
different fluoric compounds consist of inflammable bodies 
united to a peculiar principle, it follows that all attempts to 
decompose 
