"By researches, the commencement of which is owing to Messrs. Nicholson and Carlisle, in 1800, which were continued by Cruickshank, Henry, Wollaston, Children, Pepys, Pfaff, Desormes, Biot, Thenard, Hissinger, and Berzelius, it appeared that various compound bodies were capable of decomposition by electricity; and experiments, which it was my good fortune to institute, proved that several substances which had never been separated into any other forms of matter in the common processes of experiment, were susceptible of analysis by electrical powers; in consequence of these circumstances, the fixed es and several of the earths have been shewn to be metals combined with oxygene; various new agents have been furnished to chemistry, and many novel results obtained by their application, which at the same time that they have strengthened some of the doctrines of the school of Lavoisier, have overturned others, and have proved that the generalizations of the Antiphlogistic philosophers were far from having anticipated the whole progress of discovery."