° 
Bs 
Prof. Faraday on Electric Conduction. 373 
experiments with the half hemispheres. Therefore oxygen must 
have passed from e towards mn, hydrogen from e towards p, i.e. 
towards and to the parts to which the electricity has been con- 
ducted, for without such transmission of the anions and cations 
there would be no transmission of the electricity, and so no elec- 
trolytic conduction. But then the questions arise,—where do 
these elements appear? is the water at 2 oxygenated, and that 
about p hydrogenated? and may the elements be at last dispersed 
into the air at these two points, as in the case of decompositions 
against air poles? (Hzp. Res. 455, 461, &c.) In regard to 
such questions, other considerations occur respecting the particles 
about p and m, and the condition of charge they have acquired. 
These have received the electricity which has passed as a cur- 
rent through the equatorial parts, but they have bad no current 
or no proportional current through themselves—the conduction 
has extended to them but not through them; no electricity has 
passed for instance through the particle at m or at p, yet more 
electricity has gone by some kind of conduction to them than to 
any other of the particles in the sphere. It is not consistent 
with our understanding of electrolytic conduction to suppose 
that these particles have been charged by such conduction ; for 
in the exercise of that function it is just as essential that the 
electricity should Jeave the decomposing particle on the one side, 
as that it should go fo it on the other: the mere escape of oxygen 
and hydrogen into the air is not enough to account for the result, 
for such escape may be freely permitted in the case of electrodes 
