Voltaic Batteries^ S^c. 



179 



155. In the former case that progression is 2, 4, and 18 ; 

 in the latter, 2, 8, 24, and 40. There is a sufficient degree 

 of regularity in each of these rates of increase, without the ne- 

 cessity of making more than a reasonable allowance for the 

 imperfections of actual experiment, to indicate that the phae- 

 nomena in question are guided, as in every other class of vol- 

 taic action, by the influence of some fixed law, to which these 

 numbers must be considered as making but a mere approxima- 

 tion. 



156. Beyond the distances at which the standard amount 

 is required in this table, we see, as in the former one, that a 

 certain maximum amount of action is obtained in each column, 

 and by different sized plates in each. At 6 inches, the next 

 position, a maximum amount of 60" is given by a plate of 60 

 square inches, whereas at the position following, or at 8 in- 

 ches, the same amount is yielded by a plate of only 24 square 

 inches, and so on ; the operations, after we have passed a par- 

 ticular position, suirering a series of peculiar changes or al- 

 ternations, exactly similar in their general character to those 

 observed in the fifth table. 



Fig. 2. 



f ! 



b 



16 



*«-« 



157. For the sake of still more clearly exhibiting the re- 

 sults which I have here more particularly in view, I will transfer 

 them from the table to the annexed diagram (Fig. 2), in which 

 the horizontal line A B represents the length of the mass of 

 liquid in which the plates are acting, being supposed to pass 

 through its centre, and the perpendicular line C D its depth. 

 At Z C are the standard plates at their first position, and the 

 numbers 1, 2, 4,&c. on the horizontal line, show the different di- 

 stances to which the copper plates are successively removed and 

 tried. The plain lines passing at right angles through this ho- 

 rizontal line, represent the particular copper-plates (in the ex- 

 act linear measure of their squares), which at each position 

 yield the required amount of action ; and the dotted lines re- 

 present also the exact dimensions of those plates which yield, 

 at the respective positions, the amount nearest to the one 

 sought for, when that amount itself is not obtained. The 



N2 



