28 LETTEES OF BEEZELIUS 



On October 14th of the same year, Sehonbein again 

 writes to Berzelius to report on his latest electro-chemical 

 investigations. 



Ill 

 Sehonbein to Berzelius 



DEAR SIR, 



I trust you will forgive me for again taking 

 the liberty of troubling you with a letter, as it is only 

 scientific motives which induce me to write. In the 

 last few months I have spent a considerable time 

 on voltaic investigations, and have arrived at some 

 conclusions which seem to me not without importance 

 for electro-chemistry, and which I think you will be 

 interested to hear. 



Becquerel asserts in his Traitt that wires forming 

 the poles of a circuit possess the power of pro- 

 ducing a secondary current only when they are in a 

 saline solution, and his view is that this current is 

 due to the re-combination, under suitable circum- 

 stances, of the base and the acid which have been 

 separated at the poles. The results of my latest 

 experiments render this theory untenable, for the 

 following reasons : 



1. Chemically pure hydrochloric acid, sulphuric 

 acid, potash solution, etc., when used to complete the 

 circuit admit of electrical polarization of the elec- 

 trodes just as much as saline solutions. 



2. Polarization of the electrodes occurs also when 

 the battery current which traverses them is too feeble 



