T H E 

 LONDON, EDINBURGH and DUBLIN 



PHILOSOPHICAL MAGAZINE 



AND 



JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 



[THIRD SERIES.] 

 APRIL 1841. 



XLI. On the ' ollaic Decomposition of Aqueous and yllcoholic 

 Solutions. By Afthur Connel, Esq., F.R.S.Ed., Pro- 

 fessor of Chemistri/ in the United College of St. Salvator's 

 and St. Leonard's, St. Andre'w's^. 



TJAVING been engaged at intervals for several years in 

 researches on the nature of the changes which take 

 place in solutions in the principal solvents under voltaic agency, 

 and having, I conceive, attained some general results, 1 pro- 

 pose at present to give a condensed view of these experiments 

 and conclusions, the more detailed account of them beino- 

 contained in two papers already published in the Transactions 

 of the Royal Society of Edinburgh f, and a third in the course 

 of publication. The principal objects which I have in view 

 at present, are to suggest one or two general rules relating to 

 the secondary voltaic decomposition of dissolved combinations 

 of elementary bodies; to illustrate the state in which the ha- 

 loid salts are dissolved ; and to offer some elucidations of the 

 conducting power of solutions. 



I. Aqueous Solutions. — It is well known that by the em- 

 ployment of the voltameter Mr. Faraday was enabled to show 

 that in many instances of voltaic action on aqueous solutions, 

 the changes produced on the dissolved substance were the re- 

 sults not of the direct action of the electric current, but of the 

 secondary agency of the products of the direct decomposition 

 of water |. This method, however, is not capable of resolving 

 all cases, many of its results being explicable equally on the 

 idea of a primary as of a secondary decomposition of the 



• Communicated by Sir David Brewster. f Vol. xiii. and .\iv. 



X Experimental Researches, Seventh Series. [L. and E. Fhil. Ma" 

 vol. v.] " 



Phil. Mag. S. 3. Vol. 18. No. 117. April 1841. R 



