110 Mr. H. Wilde's Experimental Researches 



into water is in every case accompanied by electrolyzation, yet I 

 have nowhere ventured to affirm that it is impossible for water 

 to conduct an electric current without electrolyzation when no 

 electrode is present ; since it is only at the surfaces where the 

 electrode and the electrolyte touch each other that the electro- 

 lytic phenomena are really manifested, and, so far, the presence 

 of an electrode composed of a substance heterogeneous to that 

 which is in course of electrolyzation is essential to the absolute- 

 ness of the law of definite electrolysis. Now there is no evidence 

 whatever to show that water, whether in insulated vessels or in 

 contact with the earth, conducts an electric current after it leaves 

 the electrode in any way different from that in which the current 

 is propagated in solid bodies such as metals ; and consequently 

 no hypothesis founded upon a contrary assumption has any 

 claim to be admitted. When, therefore, the positive or negative 

 electrode of an electromotor is plunged into a body of water in 

 contact with the earth, it seems to me that the corpuscular motion 

 of the electrode, by the very act of communicating itself to the 

 molecules of water in immediate contact with it, transforms them 

 into molecules of oxygen or hydrogen, the electric impulse (after 

 leaving the electrode) being then received into the entire mass of 

 the terraqueous globe by a physical conductivity similar to that 

 by which the current is propagated in metallic bodies. 



210. It is evident that the 6onclusions which I have arrived 

 at respecting the transmutation of water, either into oxygen or 

 into hydrogen, when this liquid is in contact with the earth, and 

 also with regard to the mode in which the current is propagated 

 after leaving the electrode, must extend to the mode of propa- 

 gation of the current and to the electrolyzation of water con- 

 tained in insulated vessels. 



211. The possibility of generating and conducting an electric 

 current in a closed ring or circuit of water without the interven- 

 tion of electrodes of any kind by a physical conductivity similar 

 to that by which a current is generated and propagated in a 

 circuit entirely metallic has already been proved by Faraday, 

 who, by coiling an india-rubber tube filled with acidulated water 

 round the armature of an electromagnet, and then magnetizing 

 and demagnetizing the armature, succeeded in generating alter- 

 nate induction-currents in the aqueous circuit, just as if the 

 armature and helix of water formed part of a magneto-electric 

 machine*. 



212. MM. Van Breda and Logeman have pointed out that, 

 even in this case, when the generating aqueous circuit was com- 

 pleted by the wire of a galvanometer as described by Faraday, 

 electrolyzation occurs at the extremities of the wire in contact 



* Philosophical Magazine, S. 4. vol. vii. p. 265. 



