32 Sir H. Davy on the Relations 



pure chemical inquiry : and it is only lately, and on an occa- 

 sion which is well known, that I have again taken up the 

 subject of the general principles of electro-chemical action. 

 After a number of new experiments, which 1 shall have the 

 pleasure of laying before the Society, and notwithstanding 

 the various novel views which have been brought forward in 

 this and in other countries, and the great activity and exten- 

 sion of science, it is peculiarly satisfactory to me to find that 

 I have nothing to alter in the fundamental theory laid down 

 in my original communication ; and which, after a lapse of 

 twenty years, has continued, as it was in the beginning, the 

 guide and foundation of all my researches. 



I am the more inclined to bring forward these new labours 

 at the present moment, though they are far from being in a 

 finished state, because the discovery of Oersted and that of 

 Morichini, illustrated by some late ingenious inquiries, con- 

 nect the electro-chemical changes with entirely new classes of 

 facts, and induce a hope that many of the complicated phae- 

 nomena of corpuscular changes, now obscure, will ultimately 

 be found to depend upon the same causes, and to be governed 

 by the same laws ; and that the simplicity of our scientific ar- 

 rangements will increase with every advance in the true know- 

 ledge of nature. 



II. Some historical details. _ 



As I am not acquainted with any work in which full and 

 accurate statements on the origin and progress of electro- 

 chemical science are to be found, and as some very erroneous 

 statements have been published abroad, and repeated in this 

 country, I shall take the liberty of laying before the Society 

 a short historical sketch on this subject ; which is the more 

 wanted, as the journal in which the early discoveries were re- 

 gistered has long been discontinued, and is now little known 

 or referred to. 



As there are historians of chemistry and astronomy who 

 date the origin of these sciences from antediluvian times, so 

 there are not wanting persons who imagine the origin of 

 electro-chemical science before the discovery of the pile of 

 Volta; and Ritter and Winter! have been quoted* amongst 

 other persons as having imagined, or anticipated the relation 

 between electrical powers and chemical affinities, before the 

 period of this gi'eat invention. But whoever will read with 

 attention Ritter's " Evidence that the galvanic action exists 

 in organized Nature f," and Winterl's " Prolusiones ad Che- 

 miam Sceculi decimi 7ioni," will find nothing to justify this 



* Oersted, translated by Marcel, 1813. f Jena, 1800. 



opinion. 



