860.  Let us apply this in support of what I have surmised respecting the enormous electric power of each particle or atom of matter (856.).  I showed in a former series of these Researches on the relation by measure of common and voltaic electricity, that two wires, one of platina and one of zinc, each one-eighteenth of an inch in diameter, placed five-sixteenths of an inch apart, and immersed to the depth of five-eighths of an inch in acid, consisting of one drop of oil of vitriol and four ounces of distilled water at a temperature of about 60 deg.  Fahr., and connected at the other extremities by a copper wire eighteen feet long, and one-eighteenth of an inch in thickness, yielded as much electricity in little more than three seconds of time as a Leyden battery charged by thirty turns of a very large and powerful plate electric machine in full action (371.).  This quantity, though sufficient if passed at once through the head of a rat or cat to have killed it, as by a flash of lightning, was evolved by the mutual action of so small a portion of the zinc wire and water in contact with it, that the loss of weight sustained by either would be inappreciable by our most delicate instruments; and as to the water which could be decomposed by that current, it must have been insensible in quantity, for no trace of hydrogen appeared upon the surface of the platina during those three seconds.

861.  What an enormous quantity of electricity, therefore, is required for the decomposition of a single grain of water!  We have already seen that it must be in quantity sufficient to sustain a platina wire 1/104 of an inch in thickness, red-hot, in contact with the air, for three minutes and three quarters (853.), a quantity which is almost infinitely greater than that which could be evolved by the little standard voltaic arrangement to which I have just referred (860. 871.).  I have endeavoured to make a comparison by the loss of weight of such a wire in a given time in such an acid, according to a principle and experiment to be almost immediately described (862.); but the proportion is so high that I am almost afraid to mention it.  It would appear that 800,000 such charges of the Leyden battery as I have referred to above, would be necessary to supply electricity sufficient to decompose a single grain of water; or, if I am right, to equal the quantity of electricity which is naturally associated with the elements of that grain of water, endowing them with their mutual chemical affinity.

862.  In further proof of this high electric condition of the particles of matter, and the identity as to quantity of that belonging to them with that necessary for their separation, I will describe an experiment of great simplicity but extreme beauty, when viewed in relation to the evolution of an electric current and its decomposing powers.