Page:Experimental researches in electricity.djvu/296

270 Copper was highly positive to iron and nickel; as also to platinum, gold, and the other metals which were unacted upon by the solution. Silver was positive to iron, nickel, and even lead; as well as to platinum, gold, etc. Lead is positive to platinum, then the current falls, but does not cease. Bismuth is also positive at first, but after a while the current almost entirely ceases, as with the yellow sulphuret of potassium (882).

898. Native grey sulphuret of copper and artificial sulphuret of copper (887) were positive to platinum and the inactive metals: but yellow copper pyrites, yellow iron pyrites, and galena, were inactive with these metals in this solution; as before they had been with the solution of yellow or bisulphuret of potassium. This solution, as might be expected from its composition, has more of alkaline characters in it than the yellow sulphuret of potassium.

899. Before concluding this account of results with the sulphuretted solutions, as exciting electrolytes, I will mention the varying and beautiful phenomena which occur when copper and silver, or two pieces of copper, or two pieces of silver, form a circle with the yellow solution. If the metals be copper and silver, the copper is at first positive and the silver remains untarnished; in a short time this action ceases, and the silver becomes positive; at the same instant it begins to combine with sulphur and becomes covered with sulphuret of silver; in the course of a few moments the copper again becomes positive; and thus the action will change from side to side several times, and the current with it, according as the circumstances become in turn more favourable at one side or the other.

900. But how can it be thought that the current first produced is due in any way to the contact of the sulphuret of copper formed, since its presence there becomes at last the reason why that first current diminishes, and enables the silver, which is originally the weaker in exciting force, and has no sulphuret as yet formed on it, to assume for a time the predominance, and produce a current which can overcome that excited at the copper (899)? What can account for these changes, but chemical action? which, as it appears to me, accounts, as far as we have yet gone, with the utmost simplicity, for all the effects produced, however varied the mode of action and their circumstances may be.

December 12, 1839.