DECOMPOSITION OF WATER BY OAIVAMfSM. |85 



position of the water in the receivers takes place, accompa- 

 nied by the same result as before, oxia^en alone being 

 found in one of the receivers, viz. a 6, and hidrogen alone 

 in the other, c d. Hence he concluded, that as a decomposl- The ga&se$ 



lion of the water must have taken place at each extremity *"''P^f^^ *® 



^ - now through 



of tlie connecting wire, the oxigen must have passed through the wires. 



that wire from n to p, where it was evolved, and the hidro- 



gen in the contrary direction from p to n. 



This expl.iDation, so much at variance with all our noMons The improba- 

 of the impermeability of den^e uietalhc substances by ^'''^[ ^^. ''"* 

 gaseous bodies, seems to have been reluctantly adopted doubt of the 

 by the greater numbtr of chemists; while to a few it ^o'J>J'^««^on'^ 

 has appeared so inadmissible, that, rather than em- 

 brace it, they have been led to doubt the truth of the 

 Opinions commonly received with respect to the compound 

 nature of water. No person, howeverpfefppears to have 

 suspected the accuracy of Ritter's statement, or even to 

 have repeated his experiments with any degree of care. 

 The experiments, wh^ch I shall now describe, and which, 

 I trust, will be deemed worthy of a place in your Journal, 

 prove, in the most satisfactory manner, that the transmission 

 of the elements of water in opposite currents through the 

 connecting wire is altogether deceptive, and that the opinion 

 of such a transmission taking place is founded on the wa!)t 

 of a due attention to all the circumstances of the experi- 

 ment. 



When I first repeated the experiment of Ri'^^+er, the re-Theexpm- 

 sult, 1 confess, appeared very singular; 1 saw no way of ex- "1^°' repeat- 

 plaining why the oxigen and hidrogen were found separately, 

 without adopting the opinion of-Ritter, or denying that 

 water was a compound of these two elementary subslanccs. 

 At length, however by reflecting more maturely on theThepheno' 

 subject, 1 began to suspect, that there might be a positive "1*^!'^^*" 

 and a negative point in each receiver taken in conjnnction u9^^tive and 



with the correspondinorcup. over which it was suspended: that "^gfoviY't^tfs 

 1 • n 1 • \^ ^ I - I • tukintr place la 



the extremity of the wire P, fig. 3, connected with the zinc eacli receiver, 



side of the battery, being positive, and the water acting as 



a conductor to the galvanic energy, the positive state would 



be conveyed through the water to the connecting wive hjo, 



£0 that the extremity p would also become positive; while, 



for 



