Academy of Sciences in Paris. 367 



in depicting the internal history of man, or as a poet absorbed by 

 the fictions of scenic illusion. After 1810, the philosophic ideas of 

 Goethe were universally received ; and amongst others, the illustrious 

 De Candolle developed them in his ' Principes de la Symme'trie et de 

 la Metamorphose des Plantes.' Goethe removes the astonishment we 

 might feel at a poet, whose natural dispositions are generally sup- 

 posed to be adapted only for the appreciation of moral phenomena, 

 having been able to discern with so much precision the laws of the 

 development of the organs of plants, by detailing, in a minute and 

 interesting manner, the history and progress of his scientific studies. 

 In the third and last part, the author examines with much acuteness 

 the various ideas which have been published since the appearance of 

 his work upon the analogy of the parts of vegetables ; his peculiar 

 susceptibility relative to the French doctrines is here unreservedly dis- 

 played, both in his exultation at the overthrow of what he charac- 

 terizes as a dictatorship, which had existed too long, and his regret 

 that some of his favourite ideas are not sufficiently encouraged. M. 

 Ge'offroy concluded by remarking, that this work had been sent in 

 acknowledgment of an article written by him in the * Ann ales des 

 Sciences Naturelles,' entitled * Sur les Ecrits de Goethe, lui donnant 

 des droits au titre de Savant Naturaliste/ 



CHEMISTRY. 



On the Connexion between Chemical and Electrical Action. On 

 the llth of July, M. Becquerel read a memoir forming a continua- 

 tion of his attempts to trace the connexion between chemical and 

 electric action. The two subjects examined in this memoir are the 

 development of electricity by friction and phosphorescence. It has 

 been generally supposed that friction is produced by the reciprocal 

 interlacing of the rough parts of the surfaces brought into contact, 

 but from various experiments there is reason to believe that mole- 

 cular attraction is one of the causes of friction. This reaction of the 

 molecules on each other, by producing a derangement of their equi- 

 librium, must also disturb that of the electric forces, for it is now 

 unquestionable that electricity is disengaged whenever the molecules 

 of a body are displaced in any manner. Added to which, since 

 chemical action is one of the principal causes of disengagement, we 

 should examine how far the transitory alterations which the surfaces 

 of bodies undergo during friction, exercise an influence on the pro- 

 duction of the phenomena observed. And may not these phenomena, 

 which bear so strong a relation to those of heat, be owing, like them, 

 to vibratory motions of a particular species of that ethereal substance 

 which is supposed to be dispersed throughout all space? After 

 noticing some of the general effects of friction, M. Becquerel proceeds 

 to examine them in detail, as manifested in different substances. 

 When two plates of different metals are placed one at each end of 

 a copper wire, and brought into friction with each other, each of them 

 acquires an excess of contrary electricity, whence a current is imme- 



