Page:Various Forces of Matter.djvu/146

134 and beautiful manner. Here are some pieces of zinc covered with mercury, exactly in the same way as the zinc in that retort is covered; and if I put this plate into sulphuric acid I get no gas, but this most extraordinary thing occurs, that if I introduce along with the zinc another metal which is not so combustible, then I reproduce all the action. I am now going to put to the amalgamated zinc in this retort some portions of copper wire (copper not being so combustible a metal as the zinc), and observe how I get hydrogen again, as in the first instance—there, the bubbles are coming over through the pneumatic trough, and ascending faster and faster in the jar; the zinc now is acting by reason of its contact with the copper.

Every step we are now taking brings us to a knowledge of new phenomena. That hydrogen which you now see coming off so abundantly does not come from the zinc as it did before, but from the copper. Here is a jar containing a solution of copper. If I put a piece of this amalgamated zinc into it, and leave it there, it has scarcely any action, and here is a plate of platinum which I will immerse in the same solution, and might leave it there for hours,