298 



EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATIONS. 



different substances, and consequently formed to a certain 

 extent a blank in the chemical theory of the voltaic pile. 

 These results, coupled with the previously-arranged tables of 

 electro-chemical relations, and with the great improvements 

 in apparatus for measuring these relations recently made by 

 Mr. Wheatstone and others, offer every promise of the ultimate 

 establishment of accurate measures of affinity. I give the 

 following tables as an approximative list, without attempting 

 to give the degrees of intensity, which can only be filled up 

 by a careful series of researches exclusively devoted to this 

 object : 



(52.) Chlorine. 



Bromine. 



Iodine. 



Peroxides. 



Oxygen. 



Deutoxide of nitro- 

 gen. 



Carbonic acid. 



Nitrogen. 



Metals which do not 

 decompose water 

 under ordinary cir- 

 stances. 



Camphor. 

 Essential oils. 

 Olefiant gas. 

 Ether. 

 Alcohol. 

 Sulphur. 

 Phosphorus. 

 Carbonic oxide. 

 Hydrogen. 



Metals which decompose 

 water. 



Though carbonic acid and nitrogen appear to be neutral, 

 and consequently might be bracketed with the metals which 

 do not decompose water, as forming the nodal point or zero of 

 the table, yet, in consequence of the peculiar action exercised 

 by them, and detailed (29) and (30), I have placed them 

 above the metals. 



(53.) The results embodied in my present and my former 

 paper I think sufficiently indicate the field of research opened 

 by the gas battery, a field which may of course be indefinitely 

 extended. I have never thought of the gas battery as a 

 practical means of generating voltaic power, though in conse- 

 quence of my earlier researches, which terminated in the nitric 

 acid battery, having had this object in view, I have been 

 deemed by some to have proposed the gas battery for the same 



