274 M, G. Quincke on Electrolysis, and the 



battery were passed. In case Earaday's law also holds for these 

 liquids^ the quantity decomposed is too small to demonstrate it; 

 for the most delicate test (a polarization-current through the 

 substances separated) is not possible here. 



It must, however^ not be forgotten that the conductivity of 

 the liquid must change itself by jerks^ through the electroche- 

 mical decomposition which takes place suddenly when the charge 

 of the Leyden battery is gradually increased, and, further, that 

 through such a column of liquid a strongly charged Leyden 

 battery can only be partially discharged, i. e. until the difference 

 of the potentials of the free electricity on the inner and outer 

 coating has fallen below a certain value. 



I certainly have not succeeded in proving these conclusions 

 by experiment, because with the so-called insulating liquids, 

 through the great density of the free electricity upon the inner 

 coating of the Leyden battery, the particles of liquid (total mo- 

 lecules) themselves are electrified and are repelled by the elec- 

 trode in connexion with the inner coating. 



Hence arises in the liquid what Faraday* has termed a "car- 

 rying discharge,^^ which I would translate " mechanische Entla- 

 dung." This mechanical conduction is also set up in powerful 

 galvanic batteries, and has the same disturbing influence as in 

 the experiments with the Leyden battery here described. Lap- 

 schin and Tichanowitsch observed, in pure ethyhc alcohol, ether^ 

 and amylic alcohol, hardly any traces of decomposition with a 

 Bunsen's battery of 900 elements ; on the contrary, with the 

 last two liquids an undulating motion from the carbon pole to 

 the zinc pole took place. This electrical current by means of 

 mechanical conduction is by no means inconsiderable ; and on 

 this account it can with difficulty be separated from the electric 

 current conducted electrolytically, in case such occurs — the more 

 so because both are, in a similar if not in quite the same manner, 

 dependent on the length of the path traversed through the liquid. 

 The quantity of electricity passed through the section of the 

 conductor by mechanical conduction in the unit of time must, 

 like that which is electrolytically conducted, increase with the 

 density of the free electricity upon the inner coating of the bat- 

 tery and the magnitude of the section, and must decrease with 

 the length of the column of liquid which is traversed. To this 

 must be added that the small intensity of the current, together 

 with a few other circumstances to which I shall afterwards re- 

 turn, render accurate measurements a matter of difficulty. 



§63. 

 As the constants CC, ee^, and \ depend on the nature of the 

 * Experimental Researches, vol. i. § 1319. 



