102 Prof. Majocchi on the Origin of the Voltaic Current. 



This third experiment shows that, although there may be 

 disengagement of electricity in the chemical action of liquids 

 upon metals, no current is manifested ; because the other 

 force necessary to the production of this exists indeed in the 

 contact of the copper with the zinc; but it acts in two places 

 in a contrary direction ; whereas on the one hand the contact 

 of the copper with the zinc tends to discharge the electricity 

 in one direction, whilst on the other hand the contact of the 

 same metals emits it in an opposite direction ; and in this man- 

 ner there are two contrary forces of adhesion, which, as far as 

 regards disturbance of the electric ecjuilibrium, destroy one 

 another. Neither of them can therefore avail in setting in 

 motion the electricity which is developed in the chemical action, 

 by which this fluid is equally distributed throughout the me- 

 tallic circuit, and in the liquid which is contained in the cup 

 and exerts the chemical action on the metal. 



Those who adopt the purely chemical theory, following 

 De la Rive, in order to explain how the current originates in 

 the battery of Volta at so weak a tension, admit, speaking ac- 

 cording to the system of the dualists, that the two electricities 

 separated by the chemical action tend to unite by their re- 

 ciprocal attraction ; and it is therefore that in this point, 

 where thei'e is a separation of the two electricities, they in fact 

 unite again in part. The tension therefore does not become 

 very great, because it is only the portions of the \.v^o electri- 

 cities remaining separate that form themselves into a cur- 

 rent. The neutralization or the equilibrium of the electricity 

 evolved by chemical action, according to the followers of the 

 pure chemical theory, does not occur at all by virtue of the 

 action itself; whilst, according to us, this disturbance would 

 be produced by a second force, which would be adhesion. 

 Now those who adopt purely the theory of contact, it appears, 

 see in the chemical action itself only a means of augmenting the 

 points of contact of the liquid with the metal, by which the elec- 

 tricity finds various ways of disposing itself in a current. But 

 how will they explain so many tacts where the chemical action 

 is manifest by the development of electricity ? Moreover the 

 simple combination of the metalloids chlorine, bromine, 

 iodine, &c. with the metals is not accompanied by a develop- 

 ment of the electric fluid ; and it therefore seems that there is 

 only a development of this fluid, when by affinity one of 

 the elements of the voltaic pair tends to combine with one of 

 the components the electrolyte or conductor of the second 

 class. 



The gas battery devised by Grove is easily explained in 

 the above-described manner of considering the generation of 



