988.  In concluding this division on the intensity necessary for electrolyzation, I cannot resist pointing out the following remarkable conclusion in relation to intensity generally.  It would appear that when a voltaic current is produced, having a certain intensity, dependent upon the strength of the chemical affinities by which that current is excited (916.), it can decompose a particular electrolyte without relation to the quantity of electricity passed, the intensity deciding whether the electrolyte shall give way or not.  If that conclusion be confirmed, then we may arrange circumstances so that the same quantity of electricity may pass in the same time, in at the same surface, into the same decomposing body in the same state, and yet, differing in intensity, will decompose in one case and in the other not:—­for taking a source of too low an intensity to decompose, and ascertaining the quantity passed in a given time, it is easy to take another source having a sufficient intensity, and reducing the quantity of electricity from it by the intervention of bad conductors to the same proportion as the former current, and then all the conditions will be fulfilled which are required to produce the result described.

P iii. On associated Voltaic Circles, or the Voltaic Battery.

989.  Passing from the consideration of single circles (875. &c.) to their association in the voltaic battery, it is a very evident consequence, that if matters are so arranged that two sets of affinities, in place of being opposed to each other as in figg. 73. 76. (880. 891.), are made to act in conformity, then, instead of either interfering with the other, it will rather assist it.  This is simply the case of two voltaic pairs of metals arranged so as to form one circuit.  In such arrangements the activity of the whole is known to be increased, and when ten, or a hundred, or any larger number of such alternations are placed in conformable association with each other, the power of the whole becomes proportionally exalted, and we obtain that magnificent instrument of philosophic research, the voltaic battery.

990.  But it is evident from the principles of definite action already laid down, that the quantity of electricity in the current cannot be increased with the increase of the quantity of metal oxidized and dissolved at each new place of chemical action.  A single pair of zinc and platina plates throws as much electricity into the form of a current, by the oxidation of 32.5 grains of the zinc (868.) as would be circulated by the same alteration of a thousand times that quantity, or nearly five pounds of metal oxidized at the surface of the zinc plates of a thousand pairs placed in regular battery order.  For it is evident, that the electricity which passes across the acid from the zinc to the platina in the first cell, and which has been associated with, or even