"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 dried and exposed to a strong heat; a
minute quantity of white matter remained, which, as far as my
examinations could go, had the properties of carbonate of soda. I
compared it with similar minute portions of the pure carbonates
of potash, and similar minute portions of the pure carbonates of
potash and soda. It was not so deliquescent as the former of
these bodies, and it formed a salt with nitric acid, which, like
nitrate of soda, soon attracted moisture from a damp atmosphere
and became fluid.

"This result was unexpected, but it was far from convincing me
that the substances which were obtained were generated. In a
similar process with glass tubes, carried on under exactly the