Page:Experimental researches in electricity.djvu/65

Rh 146. With regard to the substances on which conducting power is thus conferred by liquidity, the degree of power so given is generally very great. Water is that body in which this acquired power is feeblest. In the various oxides, chlorides, salts, etc., etc., it is given in a much higher degree. I have not had time to measure the conducting power in these cases, but it is apparently some hundred times that of pure water. The increased conducting power known to be given to water by the addition of salts would seem to be in a great degree dependent upon the high conducting power of these bodies when in the liquid state, that state being given them for the time, not by heat but solution in the water.

147. Whether the conducting power of these liquefied bodies is a consequence of their decomposition or not (149), or whether the two actions of conduction and decomposition are essentially connected or not, would introduce no difference affecting the probable accuracy of the preceding statement.

148. This general assumption of conducting power by bodies as soon as they pass from the solid to the liquid state, offers a new and extraordinary character, the existence of which, as far as I know, has not before been suspected; and it seems importantly connected with some properties and relations of the particles of matter which I may now briefly point out.

149. In almost all the instances, as yet observed, which are governed by this law, the substances experimented with have been those which were not only compound bodies, but such as contain elements known to arrange themselves at the opposite poles; and were also such as could be decomposed by the electrical current. When conduction took place, decomposition occurred; when decomposition ceased, conduction ceased also; and it becomes a fair and an important question, Whether the conduction itself may not, wherever the law holds good, be a consequence not merely of the capability, but of the act of decomposition? And that question may be accompanied by another, namely, Whether solidification does not prevent conduction, merely by chaining the particles to their places, under the influence of aggregation, and preventing their final separation in the manner necessary for decomposition?

150. But, on the other hand, there is one substance (and others may occur), the per-iodide of mercury, which, being experimented with like the others (136), was found to insulate when solid, and to acquire conducting power when fluid; yet it did not seem to undergo decomposition in the latter case.