Page:The fundamental laws of electrolytic conduction.djvu/54

 The series of numbers representing electrochemical equivalents must, like those expressing the ordinary equivalents of chemically acting bodies, remain subject to the continual correction of experiment and sound reasoning.

I give the following brief table of ions and their electrochemical equivalents, rather as a specimen of a first attempt than as anything that can supply the want, which must very quickly be felt, of a full and complete tabular account of this class of bodies. Looking forward to such a table as of extreme utility (if well constructed) in developing the intimate relation of ordinary chemical affinity to electrical actions, and identifying the two, not to the imagination merely, but to the conviction of the senses and a sound judgment, I may be allowed to express a hope, that the endeavor will always be to make it a table of real, and not hypothetical, electrochemical equivalents; for we shall else overrun the facts, and lose all sight and consciousness of the knowledge lying directly in our path.

The equivalent numbers do not profess to be exact, and are taken almost entirely from the chemical results of other philosophers in whom I could repose more confidence, as to these points, than in myself.