4,2 Mr. Davy's Lecture on the Decomposition and Composition 
In these cases the water might possibly have interfered. 
Other experiments gave however more distinct results. 
Barytes and strontites, even when heated to intense white- 
ness, in the electrical circuit by a flame supported by oxygene 
gas, are non-conductors ; but by means of combination with 
a very small quantity of boracic acid, they become conductors ; 
and in this case inflammable matter, which burns with a deep 
red light in each instance, is produced from them at the nega- 
tive surface. The high temperature has prevented the success 
of attempts to collect this substance ; but there is much 
reason to believe that it is the basis of the alkaline earth 
employed. 
Barytes and strontites have the strongest relations to the 
fixed alkalies of any of the earthy bodies ;* but there is a 
chain of resemblances, through lime, magnesia, glucina, 
alumina, and silex. And by the agencies of batteries suffi- 
ciently strong, and by the application of proper circumstances, 
there is no small reason to hope, that even these refractory 
bodies will yield their elements to the methods of analysis by 
electrical attraction and repulsion. 
In the electrical circuit we have a regular series of powers, 
of decomposition from an intensity of action, so feeble as 
scarcely to destroy the weakest affinity existing between 
the parts of a saline neutral compound, to one sufficiently 
* The similarity between the properties of earths and metallic oxides, was noticed 
in the early periods of chemistry. The poisonous nature of barytes, and the great 
specific gravity of this substance as well as of strontites, led La voisie a to the conjec- 
ture that they were of a metaliic nature. That metals existed in the fixed alkalies 
seems however never to have been suspected. From their analogy to ammonia, nitro- 
geneand hydrogene have been supposed to be amongst their elements. It is singular, 
with regard to this class of bodies, that those most unlike metallic oxides are the first 
which have been demonstrated to be such. 
