134 ANNUAL RECORD OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 



end showed positive, the other negative electricity ; and this 

 seemed to be a physical necessity, so that it was concluded 

 that there existed the possibility of thermo-electric excita- 

 tion if the crystal was hemimorphous, and if pieces of crystals 

 showed a thermo-electric tension it was concluded that the 

 perfect crystal would be hemimorphous. My studies npon 

 many varieties of crystals show that this idea is wholly nn- 

 founded, and rather is it true that the thermo-electric excita- 

 tion is a general property of all crystals, at least those in 

 which other properties render it not impossible, and that, if 

 the tension were not too feeble to be measured by our instru- 

 ments, it would always be discovered." 



^he observations of the distribution of electricity, both in 

 the perfect and in the broken crystals, force us to modify 

 our former views as to the nature of crystals in general. Un- 

 til now, certainly all mineralogists and physicists have as- 

 sumed that, if a crystal be broken or cloven, then all physical 

 peculiarities, except the exterior form, are to be found in the 

 separate pieces as in the original crystal, and that, therefore, 

 the pieces are, in these respects, similar to each other; and, 

 indeed, the optical and thermal properties do not allow us 

 to detect any differences in this respect. On the other hand, 

 the thermo-electric phenomena show that this view can not 

 be maintained intact. We must now consider the crystal as 

 a complete individual in itself, in which, as in the organic 

 individual, the respective parts do not resemble each other 

 or the whole, though the exterior form of the parts and the 

 Avhole may be perfectly similar. Sachsc. Gesellschaft,lS12. 



THE DISSIPATION OF ELECTRICITY IN GASES. 



In a memoir by Boboulieff, in the journal of the Russian 

 Physical and Chemical Societies, the author has ably dis- 

 cussed the question of the gradual dissipation of the elec- 

 tricity with which any insulated conductor may be charged. 

 After giving in some detail the conflicting results arrived at 

 by the most eminent experimenters, such as Coulomb, Mat- 

 teuci, Dellmann, Charault, Warburg, Riess, Biot, and others, 

 as to' the dependence of the slow dispersion npon moisture, 

 pressure, temperature, the nature of the gas, etc., Boboulieff 

 then follows out the indications given by the modern dynam- 

 ical theory of the constitution of gases. He shows that if 



