s upon nitrate of silver.

"In cases when I had procured much soda, the glass at its point of
contact with the wire seemed considerably corroded; and I was confirmed
in my idea of referring the production of the alkali principally to
this source, by finding that no fixed saline matter could be obtained
by electrifying distilled water in a single agate cup from two points of
platina with the Voltaic battery.

"Mr. Sylvester, however, in a paper published in Mr. Nicholson's journal
for last August, states that though no fixed alkali or muriatic acid
appears when a single vessel is employed, yet that they are both formed
when two vessels are used. And to do away with all objections with
regard to vegetable substances or glass, he conducted his process in
a vessel made of baked tobacco-pipe clay inserted in a crucible of
platina. I have no doubt of the correctness of his results; but the
conclusion appears objectionable. He conceives, that he obtained fixed
alkali, because the fluid after being heated and evaporated left a
matter that tinged turmeric brown, which would have happened had it
been lime, a substance that exists in considerable quantities in all
pipe-clay; and even allowing the presence of fixed alkali, the materials
employed for the manufacture of tobacco-pipes are not at all such as to
exclude the combinations of this substance.

"I resumed the inquiry; I procured small cylindrical cups of agate of
the capacity of about one-quarter of a cubic inch each. They were
boiled for some hours in distilled water, and a piece of very white and
transparent amianthus that had been treated in the same way was made
then to connect together; they were filled with distilled water and
exposed by means of two platina wires to a current of electricity, from
one hundred and fifty pairs of plates of copper and zinc four inches
square, made active by means of solution of alum. After forty-eight
hours the process was examined: Paper tinged with litmus plunged into
the tube containing the transmitting or positive wire was immediately
strongly reddened. Paper colored by turmeric introduced into the other
tube had its color much deepened; the acid matter gave a very slight
degree of turgidness to solution of nitrate of soda. The fluid that
affected turmeric retained this property after being strongly
boiled; and it appeared more vivid as the quantity became reduced by
evaporation; carbonate of ammonia was mixed with it, and the whole