This, if concentrated in a single discharge, would be equal to a very great flash of lightning; while the chemical action of a single grain of water on four grains of zinc would yield electricity equal in quantity to a powerful thunderstorm.

Thus his mind rises from the minute to the vast, expanding involuntarily from the smallest laboratory fact till it embraces the largest and grandest natural phenomena.[1] In reality, however, he is at this time only clearing his way, and he continues laboriously to clear it for some time afterwards.

He is digging the shaft, guided by that instinct towards the mineral lode which was to him a rod of divination.

'Er riecht die Wahrheit,' said the lamented Kohlrausch, an eminent German, once in my hearing:--'He smells the truth.' His eyes are now steadily fixed on this wonderful voltaic current, and he must learn more of its mode of transmission.
On May 23, 1833, he read a paper before the Royal Society 'On a new Law of Electric Conduction.' He found that, though the current passed through water, it did not pass through ice:--why not, since they are one and the same substance?
Some years subsequently he answered this question by saying that the liquid condition enables the molecule of water to turn round so as to place itself in the proper line of polarization, while the rigidity of the solid condition prevents this arrangement.

This polar arrangement must precede decomposition, and decomposition is an accompaniment of conduction.