On February 22 he attended at the request of the Committee of Managers, and informed them that he should be able to commence his course of lectures on Electro-Chemical Science on Saturday, March 12, at two o’clock, and those on Geology on Wednesday evening, the sixteenth of that month. In his opening lecture he thus spoke of electro-chemistry and its power of analysis: ‘In this it will be seen that Volta has presented to us a key which promises to lay open some of the most mysterious recesses of nature. Till this discovery our means were limited; the field of pneumatic research had been exhausted, and little remained for the experimentalist except minute and laborious processes. There is now before us a boundless prospect of novelty in science, a country unexplored but noble and fertile in aspect, a land of promise in philosophy.’ In the Laboratory Book, probably about this time, he wrote, ‘An instrument for procuring those metals that have not yet been reduced--_for decomposing muriatic acid gas_, fluoric, &c., and _boracic acid gas_.’ On April 19 and 20 Davy was again at work with the battery of 520 pair of plates. He began thus: ‘Indications of the decomposition of muriatic acid. To use every effort to ensure accuracy in the results.’ ‘A given quantity of muriatic acid gas was acted upon by dry charcoal; there was continued vivid light in the galvanic circuit. The action was continued for ten minutes; when a little water was added no absorption took place, so that all the muriatic acid gas was decomposed. Some other experiments were made with dry muriate of lime and mercury and with a solution of muriate of lime, strontium, and soda.’ On June 30 he had a paper read at the Royal Society on the ‘Decomposition of the Earths Strontia, Lime, Magnesia, by Means of Iron at the Negative End of the Battery.’ Berzelius having mentioned in a letter that he had succeeded by using mercury as the negative pole, Davy repeated Berzelius’s experiment, and decomposed alumina and silica by an amalgam of mercury and potassium at the negative end of the battery. On July 11 he laid before the managers of the Royal Institution the following paper: A new path of discovery having been opened in the agencies of the electrical battery of Volta, which promises to lead to the greatest improvements in chemistry and natural philosophy and the useful arts connected with them; and since the increase of the size of the apparatus is absolutely necessary for pursuing it to its full extent, it is proposed to raise a fund by subscription for constructing a powerful battery, worthy of a national establishment and capable of promoting the great objects of science.