ANALYSIS OF THE GALVANIC PILE. Q$f 



oilier substances, which prevent them from exercising their 

 characteristic effects; a case most common iri chemical com- 

 pounds. The characteristic effect of fire is heat; when free 

 it acts upon the thermometer; but it does not, when com- 

 bined with other substances. Lucidity is the characteristic' 

 effect of light; but this is not lucid in phosphori, till they 

 are decomposing : and also various bodies, while decompos- 

 ing, emit odorute substances, which in their compound state 

 had no odour. Now, the light emitted by the electric fluid 

 probably belongs to the vector, which has many properties 

 of the former; but it is not lucid, therefore light must be 

 combined in it with some other ingredient. The odorate 

 substance appears to belong to the electric matter, but this 

 has no odour, therefore the former must also be combined 

 in it with some other substance. Lastly, the fire emitted 

 cannot be referred directly to either the vector or the elec- 

 tric matter; but probably, during their common decomposi- 

 tion, it is itself composed of the light and igneous matter 

 disengaged. That fire is a compound, is a system which I Fireacom- 

 have also treated with many experimental details in the P ound « 

 above mentioned works. 



No natural philosopher, who has applied to the study of Nothing to 

 any main branch of terrestrial phenomena according to the st4 SS er us in 

 rules of analysis instituted by the immortal Bacon, wilf na ture of the 

 be repulsed by the idea of so many elements entering into electric fluid. 

 the composition of the electric fluid, though hitherto almost 

 excluded from the catalogue of chemical substances by a 

 class of chemists, who confine their observations within their 

 laboratories. When, with the view of ascending from some 

 of the most common phenomena to general causes, we have 

 followed this scrupulous analysis by a certain number of 

 regular steps, we are yet, in almost every branch, stopped 

 for want of intelligible links, though in series of phenomena 

 manifestly connected together by some common cause; as 

 are for instance many phenomena manifested in our che- 

 mical operations, with some which we daily observe in the 

 atmosphere, that great laboratory of nature on Our globe. 

 The filling up of these chasms by gratuitous hypotheses is 

 only protracting the attainment of real knowledge. 



Let not therefore natural philosophers lose sight of an This expanse 

 V o L. XX VI— Aug. 1810. S expansible 



