On the Temperatures of Conductors of Electrical Currents. 193 



worthy of preservation, inasmuch as the first is of some import- 

 ance at the present time, and has found its way into several of 

 our best treatises : a solution agreeing in most respects with 

 that by Mr. Burrow is given by Professor Young in pp. 24, 25 

 of his useful work on the Elements of Mechanics. Mr. Thomas 

 Todd was a " commission agent in West Smithfield," whence he 

 occasionally wrote in the periodicals under the signature " West- 

 smithfieldiensis :" he appears to have delighted in a public dis- 

 pute, and is principally remarkable for his protracted and some- 

 what violent controversies respecting the principles upon which 

 the equation of payments in arithmetic ought to be based. Mr. 

 William Wales is well known as the astronomer who accompanied 

 Captain Cook in his second and third voyages. He was the 

 author of several works on general literature, and also published 

 a Restoration of Apollonius on Determinate Section in conjunc- 

 tion with his friend the Rev. John Lawson. An interesting 

 series of letters which passed between these two able geometers, 

 mostly relating to the Restoration of Apollonius, has recently 

 fallen into my possession, from which it is evident that Mr. Wales 

 was not inattentive to the study of pure geometry, even when 

 engaged in making observations on the transit of Venus on the 

 dreary shores of Hudson^s Bay. Mr. Burrow appears to have 

 completed Lord Charles Cavendish's requirements during the 

 following month, for on "October \7" it is noted that he " called 

 on Lord Cavendish and am to carry him the things copied out 

 next Tuesday at 10 o'clock .'' This nobleman was the father of 

 Henry Cavendish, Esq., whose name is so intimately connected 

 with chemistry and the density of the earth ; but it is not pro- 

 bably so well known that the elder Cavendish interested himself 

 so much with the niceties of physical astronomy. 



Burnley, Lancashire, 

 January 13, 1853. 



[To be continued.] 



XXX. On the Temperatures of Conductors of Electrical Currents, 

 By Richard Adie, Esq., Liverpool^. 



IN my communication in the January Number of this Journal, 

 I took occasion to show that galvanic currents had the 

 power of rearranging the temperatures of the conductors after 

 the cessation of the currents had allowed the temperatures to 

 become equalized. I have now to return to the subject, to 

 prove that the, time required for an electrical current to alter 

 the temperature of a joint is shorter than if the same joint is 

 left to change by radiation only. I have also to oflfer evidence 

 * Communicated by the Author. 



