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both remaining portions of the eledric fluid are reciprocally fatu rated 

 with folid matter. In neither cafe therefore can any attradion take 

 place between either body and the fluid belonging to the other. 

 Confequently, the repulfion exifling between the two portions of 

 the fluid muft operate without refiftance^ and the two bodies be 

 repelled from each other. 



Should this folution of eledric attradlion and repulfion be ad- 

 mitted, it will perhaps alfo remove the difficulty of magnetic re- 

 pulfion. In this part of philofophy it has been found difficult to 

 explain the repulfion of the correfponding poles agreeably to the 

 theory of a magnetic fluid. In every magnetical body the equilibrium 

 of this fluid is fuppofed to be difturbed, and one part of the body 

 is conceived to be overcharged with the fluid, whilfl: the other is 

 undercharged. The difficulty was to explain the repulfion of the 

 undercharged poles, as in eledricity to explain the repulfion of 

 bodies negatively eledrified. Mr. Kirwan has indeed, in a Me- 

 moir contained in the Sixth Volume of the Tranfa(fHons of the 

 Academy, referred the phaenomena of magnetifm to cryftallization ;. 

 but his mention of the term faturated in that Memoir feems to 

 imply, that he does not mean to exclude the fuppofition of a mag- 

 netic fluid. If this be adopted, the preceding folution may be ap- 

 plied to the phagnomena of magnetifm, in the fame manner in 

 which it has been already applied to thofe of eledricity. 



The theory, according to which the preceding folution has been 

 propofed, fuppofes the eledric fluid Tifmgle fluid ; but it is not ne- 



ceffary 



