[ 366 J 



LXII. On the Theory of Magnetic Electricity '. By Mr. Wm. 

 Sturgeon, Member of the British Association for the Pro- 

 motion of Science ; Lecturer at the Hon. Bast India Com- 

 pany's Military Academy, Addiscombc, $c, <frc. 



[Continued from p. 207.] 



¥ T is probable, however, that other laws are in operation 

 *• during this novel process of excitation, which are still more 

 remotely situated from observation ; and require for their de- 

 velopment, experiments and a mode of reasoning of a very 

 different order to those which have been employed for orga- 

 nizing the system of 'proximate laws already explained. 



It appears to me that electric currents generated by mag- 

 netic agency are not the immediate effects of the magnet em- 

 ployed in the excitation. It is highly probable that there is 

 a mediate or intervening agent called forth ; — the magnet- 

 ism natural to the excited metal, which, by being polarized 

 by the exciting polar magnetic lines of the magnet, becomes 

 the immediate agent in giving life and energy to the previously 

 dormant electricity of the metal. 



Remote and mysterious as the intermediate agency of the 

 natural magnetism of the metal in this process of exciting 

 electricity may appear in the present infantile stage of the 

 science, I have much reason to suppose that such is the fact. 

 The phaenomena in magnetic-electricity, as well as those in 

 electro-magnetism, are highly favourable to the hypothesis ; 

 and I am not aware of an exception that militates directly 

 against it. Moreover, the facility with which the modus operandi 

 might be explained upon the simple principles of polar mag- 

 netic lines alone, would, I am persuaded, establish a degree of 

 plausibility at least, not easily shaken by any counter-reason- 

 ing likely to be advanced ; and the illustrations which it would 

 be possible to bring forward in support of such an hypothesis, 

 might possibly be the means of fixing a basis on which the 

 theory of excitation in this curious branch of physics is even- 

 tually and permanently to be established. 



The same class of remote laws apply equally to electro- 

 magnetism as to magnetic-electricity; and it would be very 

 difficult, indeed, independently of those laws, to completely 

 harmonize with each other the phaenomena displayed by the 

 two different modes of excitation. 



With regard to electro-magnetic action, the idea can hardly 

 be said to be novel. Mr. Buxton long ago asserted that the 

 magnetism of the conducting wire becomes polarized, and is 

 the intermediate agent between the transmitted electric cur- 



