"Nothing tends so much to the advancement of knowledge as the application of a new instrument. The native intellectual powers of men in different times are not so much the causes of the different success of their labours, as the peculiar nature of the means and artificial resources in their possession. Independent of vessels of glass, there could have been no accurate manipulations in common chemistry: the air-pump was necessary for the investigation of the properties of gaseous matter; and without the Voltaic apparatus, there was no possibility of examining the relations of electrical polarities to chemical attractions." There is a candour in this statement which we cannot but admire. Nor does the admission diminish the glory of him who, by the application of such new instruments of research, was enabled to penetrate into the hidden mysteries of Nature. What avails the telescope, without the eye of the observer? To Davy, the Voltaic apparatus was the _golden branch_, by which he subdued the spirits that had opposed the advance of former philosophers; but what would its possession have availed him, had not his genius, like the ancient Sibyl, pointed out its use and application? It will be seen that he was thus enabled, not only to discover laws which are in constant operation, modifying the forms of matter, and influencing all the operations of chemistry, but, by applying them, to determine the elements of the fixed alkalies to be oxygen and a metallic base: a fact obviously opposed to the idea of oxygen being the general principle of acidity; for here it was the principle of alkalinity, if it may be so expressed. This was shaking the corner-stone of the edifice, and his subsequent researches into the nature of oxy-muriatic acid may be said to have overthrown it; for if either of the elements of this body can be considered as the acidifier, it is hydrogen. The consequences which flowed from this truth were of the highest importance, not only in correcting errors, which the progress of discovery, instead of rectifying, was actually multiplying, but in leading to the developement of new bodies. Iodine might have been recognised as an elementary body; but its relations to oxygen and hydrogen would probably have remained unknown, had not a knowledge of the true character of chlorine assisted the enquiry. The same observation will apply to the recently discovered body, Bromine. In like manner has the chemist been led, by the chloridic theory, to a more accurate acquaintance with the composition of the fluoric, hydriodic, and hydrocyanic acids; while he has also learnt that hydrogen alone can convert certain undecompounded bases into well characterised acids, without the aid of oxygen. The same discovery has completely changed all our opinions with regard to a very important series of saline combinations, and developed the existence of new compounds of a most interesting description.