48 
ON CHEMISTRY. 
as authority is of great moment on some occasions, I venture to refer, 
to a work which has recently been presented to me, by the author 
himself. In Dr. Faraday’s Experimental Researches in Electricity 
from the Philosophical Transactions , we find the following state¬ 
ments. 
* One grain of water acidulated to facilitate conduction, will re¬ 
quire an electric current to he continued for three minutes and three 
quarters of time, to effect its decomposition ; which current must he 
powerful enough, to retain a platina wire of ^ of inch in thickness, 
red hot, in the air, during the whole time —“ it will not be too 
much to say, that this necessary quantity of Electricity is equal to a 
very powerful flash of lightning. Yet we have it under perfect 
command; can evolve, direct, and employ, it at pleasure; and when 
it has performed its full work of electrolyzation, it has only separated 
the elements of a single grain of water.”—after reasoning upon the 
data furnished by certain recited experiments, the writer adds. 
“ This view of the subject gives an almost overwhelming idea of 
the extraordinary quantity or degree of electric power, which natur¬ 
ally belongs to the particles of matter ; but it is not inconsistent in 
the slightest degree, with the facts which can be brought to bear on 
this point.” 
I refer now to one experiment,—thus—“Two wires—one of pla¬ 
tina and one of zinc, each one eighteenth of an inch in diameter, 
placed five sixteenths of an inch apart, and immersed to the depth of 
five-eighths of an inch in acid, consisting of one drop of oil of vitriol, 
and four ounces of distilled water, at the temperature of about 60°. 
of Fahrenheit, and connected at the other extremities by a copper 
wire eighteen feet long, and y^th of an inch in thickness, yielded as 
much electricity in little more than three seconds of time, as a Leyden 
battery charged by thirty turns of a very large and powerful plate 
electric machine in full action.” 
My limits will not permit me to copy more ; I can only add that. 
Dr. Faraday, by a comparison of facts, calculates that 800,000 
charges of the aforesaid Leyden battery would be necessary to sup¬ 
ply electricity sufficient to decompose a single grain of water, or to 
equal the quantity of electricity which is naturally associated with 
the elements of that grain of water, endowing them ivith their mu¬ 
tual chemical affinity .” 
Now, my hypothesis has, from first to last, supposed that electricity 
is the sole bond of union between the constituents of all matter; and 
as electricity evolved by the decomposition of one substance can 
* Experimental Researches—Sixth Series, p. p. 110. et seq 
