On the Magnetic Characters of Metals^ ^c. C9 



oxides of iron, so interchange with each as to produce different varie- 

 ties, but all having the same crystalline form.* 



An Experimental Investigation of the Magnetic Characters of 

 Simple Metals, Metallic Alloys, and Metallic Salts. ^ By "Wil- 

 liam Sturgeon, Esq., Lecturer on Natural and Experi- 

 mental Science, formerly Lecturer on Experimental Phi- 

 losophy at the Honourable East India Company's Military 

 Academy, Addiscombe. 



1. The subject to which this memoir is directed is one that 

 has been already explored at different periods by many emi- 

 nent experimental philosophers, who have recorded the re- 

 sults of their labours in various works on science ; and as 

 several interesting and well-attested facts have been disco- 

 vered by those investigations, but little would appear to be 

 wanting at this time to accomplish all the desirable informa- 

 tion respecting the magnetic actions of bodies, whether of a 

 ferruginous or a non-ferruginous character. Under these cir- 

 cumstances, any further investigations of mine or of any other 

 experimental inquirer could be productive of nothing more 

 than the development of a few novel facts in addition to those 

 already recorded, or the application of some of them to novel 

 and useful purposes. 



2. It frequently happens, however, in experimental in- 

 quiries of this kind, that the different modes of investigation 

 resorted to by different philosophers, are not only productive 

 of new facts, but are the means of developing new laws, and 

 of leading to theoretical views differing considerably from 

 those previously entertained for the explanation of pheno- 

 mena which had long been grafted into the history of science. 

 And it must be acknowledged that, whether new facts be 

 added to the old stock — ^the application of any of them to 



* Journal of the Boston Society of Natural History. 



t Read April 7, 1846, to the Philosophictil Society of Manchester. Prom 

 Memoirs of Society. 



