Page:Experimental researches in electricity.djvu/228

2O2 and advance in the direction of the arrow head, or else the zinc b cannot move in the same direction to unite to the oxygen d, nor the oxygen d move in the contrary direction to unite to the zinc b, the relation of the similar forces of b and e, in contrary directions, to the opposite forces of d being the preventive. As the hydrogen e advances, it, on coming against the platina c,f, which forms a part of the circuit, communicates its electric or chemical forces through it to the next electrolyte in the circuit, fused chloride of lead, g, h, where the chlorine must move in conformity with the direction of the oxygen at d, for it has to compensate the forces disturbed in its part of the circuit by the superior influence of those between the oxygen and zinc at a, b, aided as they are by those of the battery a; and for a similar reason the lead must move in the direction pointed out by the arrow head, that it may be in right relation to the first moving body of its own class, namely, the zinc b. If copper intervene in the circuit from i 'to k, it acts as the platina did before; and if another electrolyte, as the iodide of tin, occur at l, m, then the iodine l, being an anion, must move in conformity with the exciting anion, namely, the oxygen d, and the cation tin m move in correspondence with the other cations b, e, and h, that the chemical forces may be in equilibrium as to their direction and quantity throughout the circuit. Should it so happen that the anions in their circulation can combine with the metals at the anodes of the respective electrolytes, as would be the case at the platina f and the copper k, then those bodies becoming parts of electrolytes, under the influence of the current, immediately travel; but considering their relation to the zinc b, it is evidently impossible that they can travel in any other direction than what will accord with its course, and therefore can never tend to pass otherwise than from the anode and to the cathode.

699. In such a circle as that delineated, therefore, all the known anions may be grouped within, and all the cations without. If any number of them enter as ions into the constitution of electrolytes, and, forming one circuit, are simultaneously subject to one common current, the anions must move in accordance with each other in one direction, and the cations in the other. Nay, more than that, equivalent portions of these bodies must so advance in opposite directions: for the advance of every 32.5 parts of the zinc b must be accompanied by a motion in the opposite direction of 8 parts of oxygen at d, of 36 parts of chlorine at g, of 126 parts of iodine at l; and in the