Faraday to Christian Friedrich Schoenbein   24 April 1840

Brighton | 24 April 1840.

My dear Schonbein

Here I am in the country again, to which I often run for a short period each time for the good of my health. It refreshes me and makes me able to get on with the duties of the season. Your last letter¹ I received just before I left town and though I have it not here & cannot pretend to remember it yet shall give you a sort of an acknowledgement. It is certainly very important and you seem to me to have got a good hold of the subject so that I feel sure you will pull it entirely out of its hole and before you have done will let us know all about it[.] The many facts you bring to bear on the matter & the way in which you make their relations evident is most striking. I am waiting most anxiously for the full deve‑lopment of the partially known anion. If you do succeed in establishing its independent existence and obtaining it in sensible quantity (by weight) it will be really a wonderful thing but what cannot electricity do and what deeper & more refined searcher-out is there in experimental philosophy than it.

The smell at the positive pole or electrode I had often observed² and I will tell you what happened to me respecting it as I was working on the Voltameter. In trying the definite indications of that instrument I had made the same platina plate positive many times in succession & observed in con‑sequence that the peculiar smell of the evolved gas diminished (the fluid was dilute Sulphuric acid)[.] Knowing at that time that the Pos pole gave the smell the observation led me to go in rendering the same plate positive & at last I obtained mixed gases from the instrument which had not the smell in question and when afterwards I obtained more gas making the contacts in the same way, still there was no smell. There was a darkish deposit upon the platina plate which had been so often rendered positive which gradually appeared as the uniform application of the voltaic battery to the plates went on, but having attained this state of the instrument, I now made that plate negative which had been so long positive & that Pos which had been Neg & now the gas evolved had its full smell as before. I made contact in that direction till smell was exhausted & then reversing contact it again appeared. Other things then took me off from this scent[.]

As to your letter & its matter I did not know what to do with it for as you said the expts would be printed in your Report for the association³ so they could not according to their rules print them in the Phil Transactions: if they had agreed as to the matter, I then thought of sending it to the Philosophical Magazine but at last gave it to the Secretary of the Royal Society Mr. Christie to read & if Council thought fit to notice in the proceedings⁴ and in the mean time thought I would tell you[.] After the reading I can withdraw it & then send it to the Phil Magazine at once. It ought to be published some‑where & directly. You probably know the Royal Society will read a paper but however good its character they do not print it in the Transactions if it is intended to go any where else first.

Your doubts of Grove's announcement of a definite transfer of matter across air &c coincide with my own⁵. I cannot deny it but it is a thing so peculiar that it requires the most convincing proofs.

Many thanks for your encouragement about induction. Hare has written me a letter in Silliman's Journal which I have just been answering here⁶. His criticisms have not yet driven me from my ground. As to dynamic induction I must attack that again. I perceive you have had some notice of my papers on the origin of electricity in the Voltaic pile⁷. As soon as printed you shall have the papers[.] I experimented very carefully for my own conviction & have come to De la Rive's view exactly as regards the origin. I say nothing of his theory of the pile as an instrument consisting of many voltaic elements. There I do not go with him.

I am most grateful for your very kind expressions. They encourage & cheer me when I feel low. Understand me I mean your kind expressions as a friend & after my health which on the whole is pretty well. But the memory goes. Your friend Mr. Bachofen⁸ has been here & I hope enjoyed himself. You know that I should not make company for him for my retiring habits are likely to increase rather than diminish and it is for those I already know, amongst which you are a principal one that I wish to keep my thoughts.

I am ever My dear Schonbein | Your obliged & faithful friend M. Faraday

Address: Dr. Schonbein | Professor of Chemistry | &c &c &c | Basle | on the Rhine