162 

 PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 



PROCEEDINGS IN THE ATHENiEUM, OCT. 3rd, 1833. 



Mr. W. Snow Harris read a Report on The Progress of Sciencey 

 observing that the discoveries which claim our principal attention 

 are those lately effected in the sciences of Electricity and Magnetism, 

 as they have given us new insights into some of those invisible and 

 subtile essences upon which all natural phenomena seem so mainly 

 to depend ; these discoveries resulted, in this country, from the ex- 

 ertions of Dr. Faraday, of the Royal Institution, anti they have been 

 pursued with ability and success in various parts of Europe. He 

 has succeeded in exciting a species of Electro-motion, in metallic 

 wires, by the agency of common magnets, by which not only strong 

 Electro-magnetic currents were produced, inducing heat in wires, 

 but even powerful sparks and Electro-chemical decomposition. 

 Many efforts have been made to identify Electricity and Magnetism, 

 or to discover the exact nature of their mutual connexion ; the Gal- 

 vanic pile has been so arranged as to admit of suspension in a hori- 

 zontal plane, without ever being observed to assume, like the 

 magnetic needle, a given line, or to exhibit any other magnetic pro- 

 perties. In 1819, Orested examined the state of the pile, when its 

 extremities or poles were connected by a wire through which it was 

 allowed to discharge itself; this wire operated on the magnetic 

 needle and itself assumed a given direction in regard to the magnetic 

 meridian, besides exhibiting other electro-magnetic phenomena ; if 

 the magnetic needle become itself a portion of the connecting wire 

 it will revolve rapidly, if suspended in such a way as to move freely 

 on a vertical axis : thus an advance was made and a new branch of 

 science, viz. Electro-magnetism, established. 



Mr. Harris now exhibited some experiments (which we could not 

 follow here without numerous diagrams) in illustration of the above 

 phenomena, and of Ampere's theory, that magnets are masses of 

 matter surrounded by electrical currents, which circulate about them 

 in closed curves and in planes perpendicular to their axes : this 

 philosopher also found that the voltaic series itself acted in the same 

 way as the wire connecting its pole. 



As every electrical current exerts a magnetic influence, acting at 

 right angles to it, it ought also to influence good conductors of elec- 

 tricity, and induce currents in them, so that one electrical current 

 might be caused to produce another, supposing the subject of expe- 

 riment to be brought within the sphere of action ; this Dr. Faraday 

 proved to be the case. Another important fact is that electricity 



