ELECTRO-CHEMICAL POLARITY OF GASES. 369 



assuming that the electric or voltaic discharge, the moment 

 polarity is subverted, may be regarded as an intensely heated 

 state of the particles of the electrodes, and of the inter- 

 medium across which it passes ; and my present explanation is 

 perfectly consistent with and derivable from my previous views 

 of the disruptive discharge. 



Two other theories might be proposed to account for the 

 phenomena I am considering ; the one, that the disruptive 

 discharge itself is analogous to the electrolytic, and that the 

 oxygen and hydrogen are reciprocally transferred by the 

 discharge itself. This would not, I think, be consistent with 

 the generally known facts connected with the discharge, and 

 is entirely ineffectual in explaining the Experiments 2nd and 

 3rd, where either the positive or negative terminal can be 

 made either to oxidate or reduce, according to the nature of 

 the chemical medium present, while these experiments are 

 entirely in accordance with, and the results of them flow as a 

 necessary consequence of, the view first advanced. The other 

 theory which may be advanced is, that by dielectric induction 

 the gases may be bodily separated, a layer, not molecular, but 

 corporeal or voluminous, if I may be allowed these expres- 

 sions, of oxygen being developed on the side next the anode, 

 and one of hydrogen next the cathode, the gas intervening 

 between the terminals being thus divided, as it were, into two 

 halves : this would certainly be a most curious phenomenon, 

 but I believe it to be so inconsistent with the vast mass of 

 accumulated facts in electrical science, and likely to have 

 produced in cosmical phenomena so many results which, if 

 existing, must long ere this have been detected, that I will not 

 do more than advert to it. 



I have adopted the view which I have first stated as being 

 the least removed from ordinary theories or modes of regard- 

 ing electrical phenomena, and because in the present instance 

 I can present the phenomena in no other way which is in the 

 least degree satisfactory to my own mind, while this view to 

 me well accounts for them. Assuming, then, for the present 

 this view, we get a close approximation, I may say an identity 

 of the state of polarisation in gaseous non-conducting dielec- 



B B 



