144) Mr. C. Binks on Electricity, 



60", 25", 35", 15", 15", 45", 50", 15", 5", 20', 10", 100", 15", 

 20", 60'', 15'^ 10", 10". 



108. This peculiar result is equally, or even more, obvious 

 in the remaining columns of the former table, No. 5 ; and it 

 is observable that the particular positions at which the alter- 

 nation occurs are different in each. In the latter columns, 

 in which (by reason of the greater activity of the action, the 

 time over which each experiment extends is progressively 

 shorter), the difference in many instances is so little, if any, 

 as to be scarcely discernible ; and they consequently present 

 at severatl positions a series of numbers equal in amount and 

 following each other in succession. 



109. It was first attempted to arrive at the law of distance, 

 by the results afforded at fewer and more remote positions of 

 the plates, than those given in the above tables ; for instance, 

 the positions were taken at ^ of an inch, 1 inch, 4, 12 and 24 

 inches ; and the amounts of action obtained at these presented a 

 very regular decrease corresponding to the increase in distance. 

 But some occasions arose, in which it became necessary to 

 test the action of the plates at other positions intermediate to 

 those already tried, when the results obtained were occasion- 

 ally so greatly at variance with any anticipated by the former 

 trials, that it became necessary to carry the copper plates 

 through shorter successive positions from end to end, to de- 

 termine whether or not those which had thus been accidentally 

 detected were merely the result of accident, or of some error 

 in the method of observation, or were in fact part of the gene- 

 ral phasnomena attendant upon the voltaic action, as it takes 

 place in the kind of arrangements here brought into opera- 

 tion. Hence the long columns of observations contained in 

 the former table No. 5, in the place of which it might have 

 been presumed beforehand, that a very few experiments com- 

 paratively would have been equally competent to decide the 

 point in question, viz. the effects of distance. 



110. I should have continued, as at first, to attribute these 

 unlooked for results to some accidental circumstance, had not 

 their invariable recurrence under like conditions of experiment, 

 shown that they had some connexion, whatever that might 

 be, with the general phaenomena attending these operations, 

 and were due neither to inaccuracy nor to accident. 



111. It might be suspected, among other attempts to ac- 

 count for it, that the plan here resorted to (see 64) of chan- 

 ging the zinc plate after every two or three immersions, might 

 have some share in producing this apparent alternation in 

 eflfect. But the same results follow precisely if one plate only 



