thermo-electric actions of metals in liquids. Not only was the
relative number of cases in which the volta-negative metal was the
most corroded increased by rise of temperature, but also the average
relative loss by corrosion of the negative to that of the positive one
was increased from 3.11 to 6.32.

The explanation most consistent with all the various results and
conclusions is a kinetic one: That metals and electrolytes are
throughout their masses in a state of molecular vibration. That the
molecules of those substances, being frictionless bodies in a
frictionless medium, and their motion not being dissipated by
conduction or radiation, continue incessantly in motion until some
cause arises to prevent them. That each metal (or electrolyte), when
unequally heated, has to a certain extent an unlike class of motions
in its differently heated parts, and behaves in those parts somewhat
like two metals (or electrolytes), and those unlike motions are
enabled, through the intermediate conducting portion of the substance,
to render those parts electro-polar. That every different metal and
electrolyte has a different class of motions, and in consequence of
this, they also, by contact alone with each other at the same
temperature, become electro-polar. The molecular motion of each
different substance also increases at a different rate by rise of
temperature.

This theory is equally in agreement with the chemico-electric results.
In accordance with it, when in the case of a metal and an electrolyte,
the two classes of motions are sufficiently unlike, chemical corrosion
of the metal by the liquid takes place, and the voltaic current
originated by inherent molecular motion, under the condition of
contact, is maintained by the portions of motion lost by the metal and