BY DR. HARE. 
213 
79. Such being the inevitable conditions of the process, 
how can it be correctly alleged by Professor Daniell, the 
transfer of the copper being arrested at the membrane, that 
as this metal "can find nothing to combine withy 9 it gives 
up its electrical charge to the hydrogen, which proceeds to 
the cathode? As hydrogen cannot be present, excepting as 
an ingredient in water, how can it be said that the copper 
can discharge itself upon the hydrogen, without combining 
with the oxygen necessarily liberated at the same time by 
the electrolytic process? How could the copper, in dis- 
charging itself to a eathion, escape a simultaneous seizure 
by an anion? Would not the oxidizement of this metal be 
a step indispensable to the propagation of that electrolytic 
process, by which alone the hydrogen could, as alleged, 
"pass to the platinode" i. e. cathode? 
80. In these strictures I am fully justified by the follow- 
ing allegations of Faraday, which I quote from his Re- 
searches, 826, 828: — 
" A single ion, i. e. one not in combination with another, will have 
no tendency to pass to either of the electrodes, and will be perfectly in- 
different to the passing current, unless it be itself a compound of more 
elementary ions, and so subject to actual decomposition." 
" If, therefore, an ion pass towards one of the electrodes, another ion 
must also be passing simultaneously to the other electrode, although, 
from secondary action, it may not make its appearance." 
81. In explanation of the mixed precipitates produced' 
upon the membrane, I suggest that the hydrated oxide re- 
sulted from chemical reaction between the alkali and acid, 
the oxide from the oxygen of the water or potassa acting as 
an anion in place of that of the oxide of copper; also that 
the metallic copper is to be attributed to the solutions acting 
both as conductors and as electrolytes; so that, at the mem- 
brane, two feeble electrodes were formed, which enabled a 
portion of the copper to be discharged without combining 
with an anion, and a portion of oxygen to be discharged 
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