Electricity of Contact of Gases with Liquids

Abstract

WILL you allow me to ask Mr. Enright (NATURE, p. 365) how he proved that the “charge of the escaping hydrogen was positive” or negative, as the case may be? That the escaping spray was electrified by friction, after the manner of the steam spray in Armstrong's old hydro-electric machine, is a natural explanation of these capricious effects; but that gas should be thus electrified, and that this electrification should have any relation whatever to the subject of “atomic charge,” are propositions which strike one as improbable.