I. The Bakerian Lecture.—On the diffusion of liquids

Abstract

Any saline or other soluble substance, once liquefied and in a state of solution, is evidently spread or diffused uniformly through the mass of the solvent by a spontaneous process. It has often been asked whether this process is of the nature of the diffusion of gases, but no satisfactory answer to the question appears to be obtained, owing, I believe, to the subject having been studied chiefly in the operations of endosmose, where the action of diffusion is complicated and obscured by the imbibing power of the membrane, which is peculiar for each soluble substance, but no way connected with the diffusibility of the substance in water. Hence also it was not the diffusion of the salt, but rather the diffusion of the solution, which was generally regarded. A diffusibility like that of gases, if it exists in liquids, should afford means for the separation and decomposition even of unequally diffusible substances, and being of a purely physical character, the necessary consequence and index of density , should present a scale of densities for substances in the state of solution, analogous to vapour densities, which would be new to molecular theory.