While conducting some galvanic experiments, the author accidentally used an iron-wire as a positive electrode, and was surprised to find it was not oxidated, but, on the contrary, retained its original brightness, and gave out oxygen-gas from water placed under its action, in the same quantity as a platinum electrode would have done in the same situation.

Struck by this fact, he followed it up by a course of experiments, and arrived at the conclusion that iron is in a singularly anomalous electric condition, being positive when compared with copper, and yet far more highly negative than copper when compared in their electric relation with zinc: and that although copper and iron form a galvanic combination in which the iron is positive to the copper, yet, when iron is associated with zinc as a galvanic pair, it produces a more powerful current of electricity than a galvanic pair of equal-size, consisting of copper and zinc.