660. I intended to have followed this section by one on the secondary piles of Ritter, and the peculiar properties of the poles of the pile, or of metals through which electricity has passed, which have been observed by Ritter, Van Marum, Yelin, De la Rive, Marianini, Berzelius, and others. It appears to me that all these phenomena bear a satisfactory explanation on known principles, connected with the investigation just terminated, and do not require the assumption of any new state or new property. But as the experiments advanced, especially those of Marianini, require very careful repetition and examination, the necessity of pursuing the subject of electro-chemical decomposition obliges me for a time to defer the researches to which I have just referred.
§ 11. _On Electro-chemical Decomposition, continued._[A] ¶ iv. _On some general conditions of Electro-decomposition._ ¶ v. _On a new Measurer of Volta-electricity._ ¶ vi. _On the primary or secondary character of bodies evolved in Electro-decomposition._ ¶ vii. _On the definite nature and extent of Electro-chemical Decompositions._ § 13. _On the absolute quantity of Electricity associated with the particles or atoms of Matter._
[A] Refer to the note after 1047, Series VIII.--_Dec. 1838._
Received January 9,--Read January 23, February 6 and 13, 1834.
661. The theory which I believe to be a true expression of the facts of electro-chemical decomposition, and which I have therefore detailed in a former series of these Researches, is so much at variance with those previously advanced, that I find the greatest difficulty in stating results, as I think, correctly, whilst limited to the use of terms which are current with a certain accepted meaning. Of this kind is the term _pole_, with its prefixes of positive and negative, and the attached ideas of attraction and repulsion. The general phraseology is that the positive pole _attracts_ oxygen, acids, &c., or more cautiously, that it _determines_ their evolution upon its surface; and that the negative pole acts in an equal manner upon hydrogen, combustibles, metals, and bases. According to my view, the determining force is _not_ at the poles, but _within_ the body under decomposition; and the oxygen and acids are rendered at the _negative_ extremity of that body, whilst hydrogen, metals, &c., are evolved at the _positive_ extremity (518. 524.).