211 



9. " Experimental Researches in Electricity. — Fifth Series." By 

 Michael Faraday, Esq., D.C.L., F.R.S., Fulleiian Professor of Che- 

 mistry in the Royal Institution of Great Britain. 



The object of the author in this paper is to investigate the nature 

 of electro-chemical decomposition. From the consideration of the cir- 

 cumstances of difference that mark the electricities obtained from the 

 common electrical machine, and from the voltaic battery, and of which 

 he had already established the theory in preceding papers, he was 

 led to expect that the employment of the former in effecting chemi- 

 cal decomposition would exhibit some new conditions of that action, 

 evolve new series of the internal arrangements and changes of the 

 substance under decomposition, and perhaps give efficient powers 

 over matter as yet undecomposed. For the purpose of greater di- 

 stinctness, he divides the inquiry into three heads. In the first, he 

 treats of some new conditions of electro-chemical decomposition, and 

 shows that that effect does not depend upon the simultaneous actiou 

 of two metallic plates, since a single pole might be used to effect de- 

 composition ; in which case one or other of the elements liberated 

 passes to that pole, and the other element to the other extremity of 

 the apparatus, the air itself acting as a pole. In the second, he con- 

 siders the influence of water in electro- chemical decomposition ; and 

 he combats the opinion that the presence of that fluid is essential to 

 the process is erroneous, and shows that water is merely one of a very 

 numerous class of bodies, by means of which the electric influence is 

 conducted and decomposition effected. In the third, he enters at 

 large into the investigation of the theory of electro-chemical decom- 

 position ; and after discussing at some length the various theories of 

 different writers on this curious subject, he is led to consider the effect 

 in question as produced by an internal corpuscular action, exerted 

 according to the direction of the electrical current, and as being the 

 result of a force either superadded or giving direction to the ordinary 

 chemical affinity of the bodies present ; that is, modifying the affini- 

 ties in the particles through which the current is passing, so that they 

 act with greater force in one direction than in another, and conse- 

 quently cause them to travel, by a series of successive decompositions 

 and recompositions, in opposite directions, so as to be finally disen- 

 gaged at the boundaries of the decomposing body. Various experi- 

 ments are detailed in corroboration of these views, which appear to 

 explain, in a satisfactory manner, all the prominent features of elec- 

 tro-chemical decomposition. 



10. "The Anatomy and Physiology of the Liver." By Francis 

 Kiernan, Esq., M.R.C.S. Communicated by J. H . Green, Esq., F.R.S. 



After giving a short account of the descriptions of Malpighi and 

 other writers respecting the minute structure of the liver, the author 

 proceeds to state the results of his own investigations on this subject. 

 The hepatic veins, together with the lobules which surround them, re- 

 semble in their arrangement the branches and leaves of a tree; the sub- 

 stance of the lobules being disposed around the minute branches of the 

 veins like the parenchyma of a leaf around its fibres. The hepatic 



