amagnetic than the oxygen of the air in which they are
suspended.

During this investigation Faraday observed some phenomena that led him
to a belief in the existence of another form of force, distinct from
either paramagnetic or diamagnetic force, which he called the
magne-crystallic force. He had been experimenting with some slender
needles of bismuth, suspending them horizontally between the poles of an
electro-magnet. Taking a few of these cylinders at random from a greater
number, he was much perplexed to find that they did not all come to rest
equatorially, as well-behaved bars of diamagnetic bismuth should do,
though, if subjected to the action of a single magnetic pole, they did
show this diamagnetic character by their marked repulsion. After much
experimentation, he ascribed this phenomenon to the crystalline
condition of the cylinder. By experimenting with carefully selected
groups of crystals of bismuth, he believed he could trace the cause of
the phenomenon to the action of a force which he called the
magne-crystallic force.

Extended experiments carried on by Pluecker on the influence of
magnetism on crystalline substances led him to believe that a close
relation exists between the ultimate forms of the particles of matter
and their magnetic behavior. This subject is as yet far from being fully
understood.

There was another series of investigations made by Faraday between the
years 1831 and 1840, that has been wonderfully utilized, and may
properly be ranked among his great discoveries. We allude to his
researches on the laws which govern the chemical decomposition of
compound substances by electricity. The fact that the electric current
possesses the power of decomposing compound substances was known as
early as 1800, when Carlisle and Nicholson separated water into its
constituent elements, by the passage of a voltaic current. Davy, too, in
1806, had delivered his celebrated discourse "On Some Chemical Agencies
of Electricity," and in 1807, had announced his great discovery of the
decomposition of the fixed alkalies.

Faraday showed that the amount of chemical action produced by
electricity is fixed and definite. In order to be able to measure the
amount of this action, he invented an instrument which he called a
voltameter, or a volta-electrometer. It consisted of a simple device for
measuring the amount of hydrogen and oxygen gases liberated by the
passage of an electric current through water acid