334 REPORT—1890. 
than with the copper, act only as, owing to their negative charges, they 
render possible the existence of an equal number of positive ions, no 
matter of what nature. 
If Tam right Professor Fitzgerald is now ready to acknowledge the 
views of Arrhenius as possible ones, but he assumes that the facts ex- 
plained by these views can also be explained by some other views, of 
which he has given some specimens. It is, of course, impossible to deny 
this. But as the theory of Arrhenius has done its work up to the present, 
and the new theory has yet its way to make, the former seems to have 
certain claims to be preferred. As the theory of Arrhenius has shown 
itself to be consistent with a very great number of facts, in the most 
various branches of physics and chemistry, the new theory must of 
necessity lead in all these cases to the same result as that of Arrhenius. 
Then the scientific world will have the wonderful spectacle of two 
theories, starting from different points of view, but leading everywhere 
to the same result. Science will then possess a twofold means of further 
investigation of some of its most difficult problems; a state of matters 
that cannot be too urgently wished for by all who have devoted their 
powers to such investigations. 
In reply to Mr. Pickering’s remark that the induction experiment 
upon electrolytic solutions described by me is opposed to the first prin- 
ciples of science, especially to the first law of thermodynamics, I wish 
only to remind him that by carrying out the common lecture experiment 
with two metallic balls and a charged body, we can get from the balls a 
spark, and therefore also an amount of energy. As no one hitherto has 
found in this experiment a contradiction to the law of the conservation 
of energy, I can leave the defence of my experiment to all teachers who 
annually perform this experiment in their lectures. 
Professor Lodge has asked if the experiment in question has been 
earried out, and in what manner. The description of a series of such 
experiments has been given in the ‘ Zeitschr. f. phys. Chem.’ iii. 1889, 
p. 120. The easiest way to demonstrate the liberation of ions in elec- 
trolytes by induction is to fill a glass jar covered on the outside with 
tinfoil with dilute sulphuric acid, to connect the outside with a source of 
positive electricity, and to insert in the sulphuric acid an earth-connected 
capillary electrode, z.e. a short Lippmann electrometer. The very minute 
bubbles of hydrogea developed by electrostatical actions can then easily 
be observed in the capillary tube on the boundary of the mercury and 
the sulphuric acid by help of a microscope. 
Professor Armstrong has declared that the dissociation theory of 
electrolytes is unacceptable to chemists. As far as I am aware, there 
exists nowhere a real contradiction between chemical facts and the dis- 
sociation theory, but this theory only runs against all the time-honoured 
feelings of chemists. As feelings, although very powerful things, are at 
least variable with time and custom, it is to be expected that they will 
change sooner or later. The time is not very long past when the 
assumption that, in the vapour of ammonium chloride, hydrochloric acid 
and ammonia, which have ‘so great an affinity for each other,’ should 
exist separate from one another, ran in quite the same manner against 
the feelings of chemists. Now we are accustomed to this conception, 
and in the same manner chemists will speak in a year or two as quietly 
of the free ions as they now speak of the uncombined mixture of hydro- 
chloric acid and ammonia in the gaseous state. 
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