Foreign Literature and Science. 399 



" 1 . I filled a small glass capsule with pure brome, (taken 

 from a portion which had been received from M. Balard, the 

 discoverer,) into which I plunged the two platina wires of the 

 pile, (a pile of sixty pairs, very strongly charged,) very near 

 each other, without obtaining the least deviation in the needle 

 of the galvanometer. 



2. In lieu of the capsule of brome, I substituted a perfectly 

 similar capsule of distilled water, and in the same circumstan- 

 ces, I obtained a deviation scarcely sensible. Other trials in- 

 duced me to believe that water, perfectly distilled, and con- 

 tained in a vessel composed of a substance absolutely inat- 

 tackable will not conduct electricity at all. The purer the 

 water, and less attackable the vessel, the more feeble is the 

 conductibility, until the deviation becomes insensible. 



3. Into the capsule containing distilled water, I poured a 

 few drops of brome; a small portion only of which was dis- 

 solved, coloring the water yellow : placed in the voltaic cir- 

 cuit, this solution produced a deviation of 70°, and a disen- 

 gagement of gas, very abundant, was manifest on the two 

 platina wires. This gas, collected and examined with care, 

 proved to be oxygen at the positive pole, and hydrogen, in 

 precisely double the quantity, at the negative pole, showing 

 that the water alone was decomposed." 



It appears from this, that a non-conductor, or at least, a 

 very imperfect conductor, such as pure water, may, by mix- 

 ture with a few drops of a substance, also a non-conductor, 

 brome, become a good conductor. 



I have found that iodine is in the same predicament with 

 chlorine and brome ; when pure, it is a non-conductor ; in 

 solution, it conducts well and gives rise to the decomposition 

 of the water. My father, a long time since discovered, that 

 sulphuric acid, when diluted, is a better conductor than when 

 concentrated. Could it be obtained perfectly anhydrous, it 

 might, perhaps, prove to be a non-conductor of electricity. 

 Is it not possible, that in the phenomena I have described, the 

 interposition of heterogeneous molecules, between the mole- 

 cules of water, may bear some resemblance to that of inter- 

 posed plates in the passage of electricity in a liquid." 



With a view to determine whether brome contains iodine, 

 as has been supposed, professor De la Rive further states, 

 that to a solution of starch colored blue by iodine, he added 

 a few drops of brome, and obtained a compound which gave 

 to starch two distinct colors, the one brownish and the other 



