232 On Mr. Davy’s Hypothesis: 
they would be annihilated by the intervention of the 
fluid. 
The objection might offer, that water is not a conductor 
of low intensities; ‘for instance of the Voltaic. But this 
does not affect the force of the above reasoning. For, what- 
ever be the intensity supposed to maintain chemical com- ' 
binations, it is certainly conducted by water; as is proved 
by immersing after separation any of these substances which 
become electric by contaci, in water. They lose all signs 
of electricity, and appear in the natural state. 
There are other instances wherein the medium is a con- 
ductor, and consequently admits not of differently co-ex- 
isting electricities. All electrics at a high temperature be- 
come conductors. Yet many chemical “combinations take 
place at a high temperature only. But how much is this 
difficulty increased when applied to metallic alloys! the 
high temperature of which in forming should censiderably 
assist their natural conducting powers. 
‘I scarcely imagine that any one would instance the zones 
of different electricities producible in a long conductor 
electrified by a weak power. It must be recollected that 
with regard to metallic’ alloys there can be no zones, the 
whole mass being composed of pairs of atoms united, as it 
is said, by electric attraction. 
In the same manner, so little capable of retaining different 
electricities is a vacuum which is also a conductor, that, 
as Beccaria and others have shown, the transmission bind 
annihilation of powers take place insensibly from pith balls, 
without a change of place in these bodies. 
These observations are applicable, whether we consider 
difference of powers as owing to independent states essen- 
tial to different bodies, or as 5 always evolved by separation 
after contact. 
The tendency of the preceding observations was to show 
that Mr. Davy’ s two assumptions are not only without proof, 
but entirely in opposition to any thing we know of electri- 
city. I shall now endeavour to show, that even allowing 
combining bodies to be in different states, and that in unit- 
ing they do preserve their peculiar energies, yet still that 
these powers are inadequate to account for the phenomena 
attributed to affinity. 
If there exist no such power as that i ps has been call- 
ed affinity, avd if all the phenomena of combination be 
caused by the differently electrical states of Podichyt it should 
follow that, 
i, To preduce combination, it is only necessary to pre= 
sept 
