Page:Experimental researches in electricity.djvu/72

46 phenomena of this decomposition will be reserved for its proper place in the next series of these Researches.

177. Notwithstanding the extreme dissimilarity between sulphuret of silver and gases or vapours, I cannot help suspecting the action of heat upon them to be the same, bringing them all into the same class as conductors of electricity, although with those great differences in degree which are found to exist under common circumstances. When gases are heated, they increase in conducting power, both for common and voltaic electricity (7); and it is probable that if we could compress and condense them at the same time, we should still further increase their conducting power. Cagniard de la Tour has shown that a substance, for instance water, may be so expanded by heat whilst in the liquid state, or condensed whilst in the vaporous state, that the two states shall coincide at one point, and the transition from one to the other be so gradual that no line of demarcation can be pointed out; that, in fact, the two states shall become one;—which one state presents us at different times with differences in degree as to certain properties and relations; and which differences are, under ordinary circumstances, so great as to be equivalent to two different states.

178. I cannot but suppose at present that at that point where the liquid and the gaseous state coincide, the conducting properties are the same for both; but that they diminish as the expansion of the matter into a rarer form takes place by the removal of the necessary pressure; still, however, retaining, as might be expected, the capability of having what feeble conducting power remains increased by the action of heat.

179. I venture to give the following summary of the conditions of electric conduction in bodies, not however without fearing that I may have omitted some important points.

180. All bodies conduct electricity in the same manner from metals to lac and gases, but in very different degrees.

181. Conducting power is in some bodies powerfully increased by heat, and in others diminished, yet without our perceiving any accompanying essential electrical difference, either in the bodies or in the changes occasioned by the electricity conducted.

182. A numerous class of bodies, insulating electricity of low intensity, when solid, conduct it very freely when fluid, and are then decomposed by it.

183. But there are many fluid bodies which do not sensibly