of the Volta ic Pile. \ 3 3 



solution, the conducting metals suffer a loss of their natural 

 quantity of radiant matter, capable of producing heat, it is 

 reasonable to suppose, that when a number of these series are 

 brought within the range of the conducting influence of 

 each other, as in the pile, the effects produced must be 

 heightened ; as the metals, such delicate tests of the presence 

 of radiant matter, must be peculiarly sensible of the diminution 

 of the radiant matter of those conducting bodies in their vi- 

 cinity; as in the adjoining series of the pile. 



The energy of the pile as a chemical agent increases in pro- 

 portion to the number of the series ; and when the supply of 

 radiant matter capable of producing heat, which the metals in 

 all the different series of the pile demand, owing to the change 

 going on in the pile, is concentrated by being conveyed into 

 it along two small platina wires, and when this supply is de- 

 rived from a small mass of non-conducting matter, as the hy- 

 drate of potassa, the action of the pile must be almost irre- 

 sistible, and the non-conducting compound will be as it were 

 torn asunder by virtue of two attractions, by the abstraction 

 of that radiant matter, or latent heat, upon which its very 

 existence in the non-conducting form depends; and by which 

 two attractions its matter is divided into two parts, which 

 under other circumstances possess a strong attraction for each 

 other, but here are attracted by the positive and negative poles 

 of the pile. 



Thus, the change which matter undergoes in its relations to 

 temperature, when exposed to the action of the wires of the 

 apparatus, is the very reverse of that going on in the pile ; 

 there, the quantity of conducting matter is diminished by the 

 action of the menstruum upon the metal zinc : here, on the 

 contrary, by the action of the two wires upon the hydrate of 

 potassa, conducting matter is formed, as potassium is pro- 

 duced. 



Why, it may here be inquired, should a metal, as potassium, 

 be separated at the negative, and oxygen at the positive wire ? 

 why should this preference be given by each body to each of 

 these wires ? A current of radiant matter proceeds from the 

 negative towards the positive extremity, where, by an accumula- 

 tion, a tendency is imparted to bodies, such as a metal, to enter 

 into a state possessing a greater capacity for heat, or in other 

 words to form an oxide; while metallic matter, as potassium, is 

 separated at the negative extremity, because, instead of an ac- 

 cumulation, there is a deficiency. This circumstance of excess 

 of tin; radiant principle in one body, and its deficiency in 

 another, is the cause of attraction in general. To explain 

 more fully: the potassium being formed from the non-con- 

 ducting 



