32 Faraday's Researches

and that the differences of intensity and quantity are quite
sufficient to account for what were supposed to be their dis-
tinctive qualities.

115. The extension which the present investigations have
enabled me to make of the facts and views constituting the
theory of electro-chemical decomposition, will, with some other
points of electrical doctrine, be almost immediately submitted
to the Royal Society in another series of these Researches.

December 15, 1832.

§ 3. ON A NEW LAW OF ELECTRIC CONDUCTION. § 4. ON
CONDUCTING POWER GENERALLY

§ 3. On a new Law of Electric Conduction

116. IT was during the progress of investigations relating to
electro-chemical decomposition, which I still have to submit to
the Royal Society, that I encountered effects due to a very
general law of electric conduction not hitherto recognised; and
t hough they prevented me from obtaining the condition I sought
for, they afforded abundant compensation for the momentary
disappointment, by the new and important interest which they
t^ive to an extensive part of electrical science.

117. I was working with ice, and the solids resulting from
the freezing of solutions, arranged either as barriers across a
substance to be decomposed, or as the actual poles of a voltaic
battery, that I might trace and catch certain elements in their
transit, when I was suddenly stopped in my progress by finding
that ice was in such circumstances a non-conductor of elec-
t ricity; and that as soon as a thin film of it was interposed, in
the circuit of a very powerful voltaic battery, the transmission
of electricity was prevented, and all decomposition ceased.

118. At first the experiments were made with common ice,
(luring the cold freezing weather of the latter end of January
1833; but the results were fallacious, from the imperfection

1 Fourth Series, original edition, vol. i. p. no.o few.