Voltaic Electricity on Alcohol, 8fc. 329 



the power employed being usually thirty-six pairs of four-inch 

 plates. On the first influence of the current, the negative gas 

 from the aqueous solution sometimes increased a little faster 

 than that from the alcoholic liquid, but the quantities were not 

 very long in becoming equalized. When the same current was 

 made to pass through alcohol of .796, holding T ^ of iodide of po- 

 tassium in solution, and water holding the same quantity of that 

 substance dissolved, the negative tube of the former liquid was 

 found to contain in three-quarters of an hour .11 of gas, and the 

 negative tube of the latter .13. In a similar trial, in which one- 

 fiftieth of chloride of calcium was the dissolved body, each nega- 

 tive tube contained .037 of gas in the same time. The results 

 with g|o of potash closely corresponded with those already 

 stated as to alcohol of .802, the negative gas of the alcoholic so- 

 lution collected in the tube A of Fig. 6, being in an hour and fifty 

 minutes .33, and that of the aqueous .37 in the same time ; and 

 in another trial the proportions were very similar. The negative 

 gases, when examined, were always found to be hydrogen, that 

 from the alcohol being as usual mixed with a small variable pro- 

 portion of common air or azote. In one instance I found this 

 mixture to amount to about one-fourth part ; an equivalent ab- 

 sorption of hydrogen having without doubt occurred. 



The various experiments which have been detailed, leave, I 

 conceive, no doubt that water is truly the subject of the direct 

 agency of the voltaic current transmitted through alcohol. 

 Where the alcohol is concentrated, and holds no foreign matter in 

 solution, the quantity of water decomposed even by a powerful 

 stream is small, owing to the indifferent conducting power of the 

 liquid. The effect on the needle of the galvanic multiplier when 

 a stream of moderate power, as from fifty pairs of two-inch plates, 

 was transmitted through absolute alcohol, was very trifling, but 

 still perceptible. The galvanometer employed was of the origi- 

 nal simple construction, consisting of a single magnetic needle, 

 seven inches long, and suspended by silk fibres, in the centre of 



