ned at these electrodes by the inductive action through the water as
a dielectric, for sparks may be obtained, gold leaves diverged, and Leyden
bottles charged at their wires. The water is in the condition of the
spermaceti (1322. 1323.) a bad conductor and a bad insulator; but what it
does insulate is by virtue of inductive action, and that induction is the
preparation for and precursor of discharge (1338.).

1346. The induction and tension which appear at the limits of the portion
of water in the direction of the current, are only the sums of the
induction and tension of the contiguous particles between those limits; and
the limitation of the inductive tension, to a certain degree shows (time
entering in each case as an important element of the result), that when the
particles have acquired a certain relative state, _discharge_, or a
transfer of forces equivalent to ordinary conduction, takes place.

1347. In the inductive condition assumed by water before discharge comes
on, the particles polarized are the particles of the _water_ that being the
dielectric used[A]; but the discharge between particle and particle is not,
as before, a mere interchange of their powers or forces at the polar parts,
but an actual separation of them into their two elementary particles, the
oxygen travelling in one direction, and carrying with it its amount of the
force it had acquired during the polarization, and the hydrogen doing the
same thing in the other direction, until they each meet the next
approaching particle, which is in the same electrical state with that they
have left, and by association of their forces with it, produce what
constitutes discharge. This part of the action may be regarded as a
carrying one (1319. 1572. 1622.), performed by the constituent particles of
the dielectric. The latter is always a compound body (664. 823.); and by
those who have considered the subject and are acquainted with the
philosophical view of transfer which was first put forth by Grotthuss[B],
its particles may easily be compared to a series of metallic conductors
under inductive action, which, whilst in that state, are divisible into
these elementary moveable halves.

[A] See 1699-1708.--_Dec. 1838_

[B] Annales de Chimie, lviii. 60. and lxiii, 20.

1348. Electrolytic discharge depends, of necessity, upon the non-conduction
of the dielectric as a whole, and there are two steps or acts in the
process: first a polarization of the molecul