liquid which we have just made up from copper and nitric acid, whilst our other experiments were in hand; and though I am making this experiment very hastily, and may bungle a little, yet I prefer to let you see what I do rather than prepare it beforehand.
Now, see what happens. These two platinum plates are the two ends (or I will make them so immediately) of this apparatus; and I am about to put them in contact with that solution just as we did a moment ago on the paper. It does not matter to us whether the solution be on the paper or whether it be in the jar, so long as we bring the ends of the apparatus to it. If I put the two platinums in by themselves, they come out as clean and as white as they go in [inserting them into the fluid without connecting them with the battery]; but when we take the power and lay that on [the platinums were connected with the battery and again dipped into the solution], this, you see [exhibiting one of the platinums], is at once turned into copper, as it were: it has become like a plate of copper; and that [exhibiting the other piece of platinum] has come out quite
