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VII. On the Electro-Chemical Polarity of Gases. 
By W. R. Grove, Esq., M.A., F.R.S. 
Received January 7, — Read April 1, 1852. 
XhE different effect of electricity upon gases and liquids has long been a subject 
of interest to physical inquirers. There are, as far as I am aware, no experiments 
which show any analogy in the electrization of gases to those effects now commonly 
comprehended under the term electrolysis. Whether gases at all conduct electricity, 
properly speaking, or whether its transmission is not always by the disruptive dis- 
charge, the discharge by convection, or something closely analogous, is perhaps a 
doubtful question ; but I feel strongly convinced that gases do not conduct in any 
similar manner to metals or electrolytes. 
In a paper published in the year 1849*, I have shown that hydrogen or atmospheric 
air intensely heated, showed no sign of conduction for voltaic electricity even when 
a battery of very high intensity was employed. 
In the Eleventh, Twelfth and Thirteenth Series of Faraday’s Experimental 
Researches, the line of demarcation between induction across a dielectric and elec- 
trolytic discharge is repeatedly adverted to ; induction is regarded as an action of 
contiguous particles, and as a state of polarization anterior to discharge, whether 
disruptive, as in the case of dielectrics, or electrolytic, as in electrolytes. See 
§§ 1164—1298—1345—1368, &c. 
Mr. Gassiot, in a paper published in the year 1844'|', has shown that the static 
effects, or effects of tension, produced by a voltaic battery, are in some direct ratio 
with the chemical energies of the substances of which the battery is composed ; in 
other words, that in a voltaic series, whatever increases the decomposing power of 
the battery when the terminals are united by an electrolyte, also increases the effects 
of tension produced by it, when its terminals are separated by a dielectric. 
In none of the above papers, and in no researches on electricity of which I am 
aware, is there any experimental evidence that the polarization of the dielectric is 
or may be chemical in its nature, that, assuming a dielectric to consist of two sub- 
stances having antagonist chemical relations, as for instance, oxygen and hydrogen, 
the particles of the oxygen would be determined in one direction, and those of the 
hydrogen in the other ; the only experimental result bearing on this point with 
which I am acquainted, is the curious fact which was observed by Mr. Gassiot and 
* Philosophical Transactions, 1849, p. 55. 
t Philosophical Transactions, 1844, p, 39. 
