58 M. Pouiliet on the Electricity of' Elastic Fluids. 



day ; — and during the night after sunset, or at an hour of the 

 night more advanced, or early in the morning, or at sunrise, 

 the electricity had always shown itself in quantities more or 

 less great, according to the time that had elapsed. After 

 twelve hours, the divergence of the gold leaves was more than 

 an inch, and in all these experiments the earth of the capsules 

 took always the resinous electricity. 



After the first eight days the weather changed ; a great hu- 

 midity penetrated into the laboratory in spite of every precau- 

 tion, and it was then impossible to collect the least quantity of 

 electricity. 



Twelve other capsules were ready, in which another vegeta- 

 tion had begun ; and as it had been very active while the first 

 had become languishing on account of the dryness, I imagined 

 that this new vegetation would give me very strong marks of 

 electricity ; but after having tried it with the greatest atten- 

 tion, 1 found it impossible to draw any thing from it. Thus 

 thwarted by the weather, there was but one way for me to 

 counteract these variations, and to make continuous experi- 

 ments : It was to shut the laboratory still closer, and to main- 

 tain a suitable degree of dryness, by means of absorbent bo- 

 dies. Several bushels of quicklime broken into small frag- 

 ments were spread in a very large apartment ; several kilo- 

 grammes of muriate of lime distributed in saucers of porcelain 

 were placed near the capsules of vegetation, and at last, after 

 five or six days of the drying action of all these united agents, 

 I produced artificially an atmosphere sufficiently dry and simi- 

 lar to that of the month of March. After this all the electri- 

 cal signs appeared again, even with more intensity, and hence- 

 forth, as I could counteract the influence and the variations of 

 the weather, I multiplied the experiments as much as was ne- 

 cessary. I made in this manner two vegetations of corn, two 

 of cresses, one of gillyflower, and one of lucerne. In each 

 operation the developement of the vegetable action, and that 

 of the electrical phenomena which accompanied it, were ob- 

 served during ten or twelve days. 



It was a singular circumstance, that after the three or four 

 first days of vegetation, if the condenser was put into a natu- 

 ral state after one observation, and if it was then replaced for 

 experiment only during oae second, it was then found to be 



