Hare’s Calorimotor. * 419 
ina common recipient without partitions; there was consider- 
able intensity of Galvanic action. This shows that, independ- 
ently of any power of conducting electricity, there is some 
movement in the solvent fluid avhich tends to carry forward 
the Galvanic principle from the copper to the zinc end of the 
series. I infer that electro-caloric is communicated in this 
case by circulation, and that in non-elastic fluids the same diffi- 
culty exists as to its retrocession from the positive to the ne- 
gative end of the series, as is found in the downward passage 
of caloric through them. 
It ought to be mentioned, that the connecting wire should be 
placed between the heterogeneous surfaces before their im- 
mersion, as the most intense ignition takes place immediately 
afterward. If the connexion be made after the plates are 
immersed, the effect is much less powerful; and sometimes 
after two or three immersions the apparatus loses its power, 
though the action of the solvent should become in the interim 
much more violent. Without any change in the latter, after 
the plates have been for some time suspended in the air, they 
regain their efficacy. I had observed ina Galvanic pile of 
three hundred pairs of two inches square, a like consequence 
resulting from a simultaneous immersion of the whole.* e 
bars holding the plates were balanced by weights, as window- 
sashes are,so that all the plates could be very quickly dipped. 
A platina wire, No. 18, was fused into a globule, while the 
evolution of potassium was demonstrated by a rose-colored 
flame arising from some potash which had been placed be- 
tween the poles. The heat however diminished in a few 
seconds, though the greater extrication of hydrogen from the 
plates indicated a more intense chemical action. 
Agreeably to an observation of Dr. Patterson, electrical ex- 
citement may be detected in the apparatus by the condensing 
electroscope ; but this is no more than what Volta observed to 
be the consequence of the contact of heterogeneous metals. 
The thinnest piece of charcoal intercepts the calorific agent, 
whatever it may be. In order to ascertain this, the inside of 
“Sec Plate: Fig. 3. 
