On Electric Phenomena. 17 



£ame. Through these properties we can recognize it as that 

 gas which chemists call Oxygen.^ and which forms one of the 

 ingredients of water. Now we will test the other gas. It is 

 also without smell, taste and colour; when a glowing shaving 

 is brought near it, it takes fire and burns with a feeble blue 

 flame. Those are the properties, which belong to Hydrogen^ 

 the other ingredient of water. As chemistry teaches us, that 

 one part of oxygen and two of hydrogen are united in water, 

 we now perceive, that through the passage of the electric cur- 

 rent the chemical union of water in its ingredients is decom- 

 posed and that these ingredients appear in their original form 

 as aeriform or gaseous bodies. This decomposition is called 

 electro-chemical or electrolysis. 



The two gases which we have obtained from the water 

 through electrolysis, can be again combined to water. If we, 

 for example, do not catch them separately but together, by 

 bringing the two pole-plates into a closely corked vessel, and 

 conducting through the cork a curved glass tube under a glas 

 filled with and turned dowTi in quicksilver, we obtain in the 

 glass a quantity of both sorts of gas in the same state in 

 which they were in the water. If we now raise the glass 

 with the closed mouth and bring a flame to the opening, we 

 hear a violent explosion, and the side of the glass, which 

 was before quite dry, is now covered with drops of water, 

 which have been produced from the union of the two gases. 

 In consequence of the property of this mixture of gas it has 

 acquired the name of inflammable gas. 



Other combined fluids, which conduct the electric current, 

 are also decomposed by means of this gas, and many of these 

 decompositions have obtained a great practical importance. If 

 we dissolve a metallic salt in water, for example, sulphate o£ 



. 1872. n. 1. (139) B 



