SKETCH OF ALESSANDRO VOLT A. 117 



like the gaudy posters of our London advertisers. Fruits and 

 flowers which desire to attract the attention of beasts, birds, or 

 insects, are tricked out in flaunting hues of crimson, purple, blue, 

 and yellow ; fruits and flowers which could only be injured by 

 the notice of animals are small and green, or dingy and incon- 

 spicuous. Longman's Magazine. 



SKETCH OF ALESSANDRO VOLTA. 



YOLTA'S title to be remembered rests chiefly upon his appli- 

 cation of the discovery of the production of electricity by 

 contact, which has been fruitful and continues to be fruitful of 

 results of the greatest importance in the progress of research in 

 the domains of physical forces and of the constitution of matter, 

 and is one of the most potent instruments in the hands of students 

 for enlarging the boundaries of their knowledge of the material 

 world. 



Alessandeo Volta was born at Como, Italy, February 19, 1745, 

 and died in the same place March 5, 1827. He began his studies 

 in the public school of his native town, where he distinguished 

 himself among his fellow-pupils by his capability and his as- 

 siduity at work. A passage in his first scientific paper shows 

 that when he was eighteen years old he had been engaged in a 

 correspondence with the Abbe" Nollet on subjects relating to elec- 

 tricity. At nineteen years of age he composed a poem, in Latin, 

 which has never been published, in which some of the more 

 important discoveries of the time were described. In 1774 he 

 was appointed to the chair of Physics in the Royal School at 

 Como, for which his first two scientific papers on the Attractive 

 Force of the Electric Fire, and on the Method of constructing 

 the New Electrical Machine seem to have been among his 

 strongest recommendations. He went out of Italy for the first 

 time in 1777, to make a visit of several weeks in Switzerland, 

 where he met Haller at Berne, Voltaire at Ferney, and Benjamin 

 de Saussure at Geneva. The story of this excursion was related 

 in a book* which was published at Milan in 1827. In 1779 

 Volta was made a professor in the University of Pavia, where 

 his instructions were attended by throngs of interested youths 

 from all countries, proud to be his pupils, and where he con- 

 tinued till 1819, when he retired to spend the rest of his days 

 in his native town. In 1782 he made what appears to have been 

 the longest journey of his life, in company with the surgeon 

 Scarpa, and visited the capitals of Germany, Holland, England, 



* Relatione del Prof. Volta di un suo Viaggio lelterario nel Swizzera. 



