NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. 139 



OX THE USE OF ELECTRICITY AND GALYANISil FOR PRODUCING 



EXPLOSIONS. 



M. Ebner has laid a report before the Austrian Academy of Sciences, which 

 relates to the solving of the question, " "Whether electricity or voltaism is pre- 

 ferable for the exploding of mines in quarries?" &c. The report gives prefer- 

 ence to the former, because the amount of effect of the voltaic battery depends 

 on the quality of the conductor through which it has to act ; and whenever a 

 great effect (force) is required, the alternative presents itself, either to use 

 colossal batteries, or costly conductors of the usual large dimensions. Electri- 

 city, on the contrary, operates in consequence of a mechanic action, without 

 the co-operation of the conductor ; and as the resistance does not exist, con- 

 ductors of cheap material and small power are sufficient. The apparatus 

 adopted now by the Austrian Corps of Engineers, consists of two discs or 

 plates, of 12 inches diameter, and the charge is made without the conductor 

 being employed, by the mere placing of a point between the plates. A 

 smaller apparatus can be carried on a strap on the back of a man. The con- 

 ductor consists of soft brass wire, of half an inch thickness, and each apparatus 

 is furnished with 2000 fathoms of plain wire, and 400 fathoms of wire coated 

 with gutta percha, and also materials for constructing isolated conductors. 

 The explosive substance, a mixture of sulphur, antimony, and chloride of pot- 

 ash, can be made with ease, and placed in the form of a cartridge at any part 

 of the conducting line._ "With these apparatuses explosions have been effected 

 at a distance of 1 German leagues, and fifty mines exploded simultaneously, 

 on a line of 100 fathoms. Under water explosions were effected at a distance 

 of 400 fathoms, the conductor extending to the length of 500 fathoms. The 

 effects of these machines are independent of seasons and weathers. At the 

 explosions made under water in the Danube, near G-rein, and the marble 

 quarries near Neustadt, it has been used for two years without the loss of a 

 single life. According to a signal, the explosion is made when the excavators 

 and others are absent, and bore holes are mostly exploded simultaneously. 

 Mechanics 1 Magazine, No. 1688. 



PRESENT STATE OF ORGANIC ELECTRICITY. 



Professor Goodsir has communicated to the Edinburgh New Philosophical 

 Journal "A Brief Review of the Present State of Organic Electricity." 



The general theory of electricity, says the professor, has rapidly approached 

 a consistent form through the labors of recent physicists, and particularly by 

 the researches of Mr. Faraday. The hypotheses of one or of two electric fluids, 

 however modified, have been found tenable only so far as they involved the 

 idea of force. In the phenomena of statical, as in those of current electricity, 

 there is constantly pressed upon the observer the necessity of admitting two 

 forces, or two forms or directions of a force, inseparable from one another. 

 And thus "the influence which is present in an electrical condition may best 

 be conceived of as an axis of power having contrary forces, exactly equal in 

 amount, in contrary directions." 



