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XXXIII. On the Oxidation and Disoxidation effected hy the Alkaline Peroxides. 
By B. C. Beodie, Professor of Chemistry in the University of Oxford. 
Eeceived June 19, — Read June 19, 1862. 
In a former paper * I communicated to the Royal Society the results of an inquiry as to 
the cause of the mutual decomposition which takes place between the alkaline peroxides 
and the oxides of the less electro-positive metals. This decomposition, the first instance 
of which was discovered by Thenaed in the case of the peroxide of hydrogen, had been 
regarded as of an exceptional and abnormal character, and "as such had attracted the 
attention of chemists and been accounted for by several hypotheses. 
These explanations, which attempted to show that the phenomena were caused by 
the repulsion of particles similarly electrified or were the consequence of the laws of 
mechanical \ibration, assumed their abnormal character, and tended to isolate them 
from other chemical changes, rather than to comprehend them under the same laws. 
In the paper referred to I ventured to suggest that this mode of viewing these decom- 
positions was erroneous, that the phenomena were of a normal character, and were 
to be regarded as a particular case of those general laws under which all chemical 
changes are included. On the views there developed, every chemical change is con- 
sidered as determined -by the mutual attraction of particles, or groups of particles, in 
opposite polar conditions. No d priori presumption can be raised that certain particles 
are susceptible of this polarization, and others not; this point can be determined by 
experiment alone : and I brought forward several examples, the applicability of which 
is now very generally admitted, in illustration of the point that the elemental bodies, at 
the moment of chemical change, exhibit the same phenomena of polarization and are 
subject to the same laws of diaeresis and synthesis as all other chemical substances. On 
these ideas, as we regard the weight of two volumes of oxygen, that is to say the weight of 
a molecule of oxygen, O 2 , as differing from the weight of two volumes, that is, the weight 
of a molecule of water, Hg O, in the fact that this weight contains 16 parts of oxygen in 
the place of 2 of hydrogen, so do we regard the event of the synthesis or diaeresis of 
oxygen as differing from the event of the synthesis or diaeresis of water, in the fact that 
in the one change the two atoms of oxygen fulfil the same functions, and are respectively 
in the same polar conditions as the two atoms of hydrogen and the one atom of oxygen 
in the other. 
This theory is of a purely relative character ; it is connected with no special hypo- 
thesis as to the nature of oxygen or water, but it states that, if we make a certain 
* See Philosophical Transactions, 1850, Part II. p. 759. 
Y 5 
MDCCCLXII. 
