ELECTRICAL EXPERIMENTS ON GLASS. 6$ 



tie communicating with the ground by its external coating, 

 while I stand on an insulating stool, it neither loses nor ac- 

 quires more of the electric fluid. Must Ave not hence con- 

 clude, that the outside, when once charged, neither attracts 

 any thing more from the ground, nor gives off any thing 

 to it ? 



The following experiment with the electrophone throws 

 still more light on all these facts. 



I charge an electrophorus of glass and resin ; I touch it Experiment 

 , _ ° . . T • , , , • ' . A t with the elec- 



on both sides ; I raise the cap, and place it again on the trophorus. 



electrophorus; the moment I touch with my hand either the 



external coating or the cap, I perceive a spark almost as 



strong as that which issues from the cap taken off. But if, 



o ... 



before I replace the cap, I touch the inferior coating, I take 

 from it its superfluous electricity; and when I touch it af- 

 terward the spark is almost nothing : a sign, as it seems to 

 me, that the fingers in touching the two surfaces only esta- 

 blish a communication between the two coatings, which 

 serves as a divellent intermedium, if I may use the expres- 

 sion, to develope the fluid that is disengaged. 



I offer these views to the natural philosopher, not to ere- Docs not the 



ate a neAV theory, but as an inquiry whether the igneous matter °' nre » 



J . , . * . . . .i combined with 



phenomena ol magnetism, galvanism, electricity, and ae- different ingre- 



tonations, be not subordinate to the general law of affinities, dients by che- 

 The fine experiments with which Libes and Ermann have pro duce the ' 

 enriched the fields of science concur in support of the hy- phenomena of 

 pothesis, that there is but one igneous matter, which forms e^e^ricVtyvkc.? 

 light, the magnetic, galvanic, and electric fluids, &c, and 

 is modified in them by different ingredients. In a letter 

 which I wrote to Mr. Delametherie about six months ago I 

 called these semigravitating, because I see them always 

 take a centrifugal force, and accompany this matter when 

 it is disengaged from combustible bodies: one of these 

 fluids takes it, like that of ether, at a certain degree of 

 heat ; another only at the strongest heat of a burning glass, 

 unknown before Homberg, and even in his time, which is 

 necessary to volatize gold ; and so on. The experiments of 

 Mr. Ermann demonstrate, that the flame of alcohol con- 

 tains different ingredients from that of sulphur, or that of 



phosphorus. 



