Page:The fundamental laws of electrolytic conduction.djvu/43

 a temperature, and acted too powerfully as a flux, to allow of any experiment being made on it, without the application of more time and care than I could give at present.

The ordinary protoxide of antimony, which consists of one proportional of metal and one and a half of oxygen, was subjected to the action of the electric current in a green-glass tube, surrounded by a jacket of platina foil, and heated in a charcoal fire. The decomposition began and proceeded very well at first, apparently indicating, according to the general law, that this substance was one containing such elements and in such proportions as made it amenable to the power of the electric current. This effect I have already given reasons for supposing may be due to the presence of a true protoxide, consisting of single proportionals. The action soon diminished, and finally ceased, because of the formation of a higher oxide of the metal at the positive electrode. This compound, which was probably the peroxide, being infusible and insoluble in the protoxide, formed a crystalline crust around the positive electrode; and thus insulating it, prevented the transmission of the electricity. Whether, if it had been fusible and still immiscible, it would have decomposed, is doubtful, because of its departure from the required composition. It was a very natural secondary product at the positive electrode. On opening the tube it was found that a little antimony had been separated at the negative electrode; but the quantity was too small to allow of any quantitative result being obtained.

Iodide of lead.—This substance can be experimented with in tubes heated by a spirit-lamp; but I obtained no good results from it, whether I used positive electrodes of platina or plumbago. In two experiments the numbers for the lead came out only 75.46 and 73.45, instead of 103.5. This I attribute to the formation of a periodide at the positive electrode, which, dissolving in the mass of liquid iodide, came in contact with the lead evolved at the negative electrode, and dissolved part of it, becoming itself again protiodide. Such a periodide does exist; and it is very rarely that the idiodeiodide [sic] of lead formed by precipitation, and well washed, can be fused without evolving much iodine from the presence of this percompound; nor does crystallization from its hot aqueous solution free it from this substance. Even when a little of the protiodide and iodine are merely rubbed together in a mortar a portion of the periodide