552.  The theory I have advanced accords in a most satisfactory manner with the fact of an element or substance finding its place of rest, or rather of evolution, sometimes at one pole and sometimes at the other.  Sulphur illustrates this effect very well[A].  When sulphuric acid is decomposed by the pile, sulphur is evolved at the negative pole; but when sulphuret of silver is decomposed in a similar way (436.), then the sulphur appears at the positive pole; and if a hot platina pole be used so as to vaporize the sulphur evolved in the latter case, then the relation of that pole to the sulphur is exactly the same as the relation of the same pole to oxygen upon its immersion in water.  In both cases the element evolved is liberated at the pole, but not retained by it; but by virtue of its elastic, uncombinable, and immiscible condition passes away into the surrounding medium.  The sulphur is evidently determined in these opposite directions by its opposite chemical relations to oxygen and silver; and it is to such relations generally that I have referred all electro-chemical phenomena.  Where they do not exist, no electro-chemical action can take place.  Where they are strongest, it is most powerful; where they are reversed, the direction of transfer of the substance is reversed with them.

[A] At 681 and 757 of Series VII, will be found corrections of the statement here made respecting sulphur and sulphuric acid.  At present there is no well-ascertained fact which proves that the same body can go directly to either of the two poles at pleasure.—­Dec. 1838.

553. Water may be considered as one of those substances which can be made to pass to either pole.  When the poles are immersed in dilute sulphuric acid (527.), acid passes towards the positive pole, and water towards the negative pole; but when they are immersed in dilute alkali, the alkali passes towards the negative pole, and water towards the positive pole.

554.  Nitrogen is another substance which is considered as determinable to either pole; but in consequence of the numerous compounds which it forms, some of which pass to one pole, and some to the other, I have not always found it easy to determine the true circumstances of its appearance.  A pure strong solution of ammonia is so bad a conductor of electricity that it is scarcely more decomposable than pure water; but if sulphate of ammonia be dissolved in it, then decomposition takes place very well; nitrogen almost pure, and in some cases quite, is evolved at the positive pole, and hydrogen at the negative pole.