Page:Various Forces of Matter.djvu/158

action. I take these platinum plates again and immerse them in this solution of copper from which we formerly precipitated some of the metal, when the platinum and zinc were both put in it together. You see that these two platinum plates have no chemical action of any kind, they might remain in the solution as long as I liked, without having any power of themselves to reduce the copper; but the moment I bring the two poles of the battery in contact with them, the chemical action which is there transformed into electricity and carried along the wires, again becomes chemical action at the two platinum poles, and now we shall have the power appearing on the left hand side, and throwing down the copper in the metallic state on the platinum plate; and in this way I might give you many instances of the extraordinary way in which this chemical action or electricity may be carried about. That strange nugget of gold, of which there is a model in the other room, and which has an interest of its own in the natural history of gold, and which came from Ballarat, and was worth 8000l. or 9000l. when it was melted down last November, was brought together in the bowels of the earth, perhaps ages and ages ago, by some such power