when the same fibres of cotton were made use of in successive
experiments, and washed after every process in a weak solution of
nitric acid, the water in the apparatus containing them, though
acted on for a great length of time with a very strong power, at
last produced no effects 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.