ELECTRIC PHANOMENA OF THE ATMOSPHERE. 411 
to pass over in silence the phenomena which acknowledge as 
their cause the changes of temperature ; these are always regu- 
lar, and are never subject to abrupt transitions. The trade winds, 
the monsoons and gales, testify this regularity of ascending or 
descending variations of temperature. The sudden instantaneous 
winds are produced by ruptures of electric equilibrium. It is 
the prompt attraction and repulsion of the air, intermediate 
between the clouds and the ground, which cause these sudden 
agitations, in order to neutralize their electric tensions. They 
produce those sudden storms and aérial gyrations which | have 
described in my work on Waterspouts*. In my treatise upon 
Meteorology now preparing I shall unite the proofs of the facts 
advanced in this Memoir; however, what I have stated will 
suffice to make known how this new mode of considering the 
subject facilitates the interpretation of many aqueous and igne- 
ous phenomena, which have been hitherto inexplicable. 
SuUmMary. 
60. 1st. Ponderable matter alone has the power of coercing 
the cause of electric phenomena; and the phenomenon which 
produces this coercion is that which has been improperly called 
resinous electricity, and still more improperly negative elec- 
tricity. §§ 4 to 36. 
_ 2nd. Pure space, deprived of ponderable matter, not coercing 
this cause in a special manner, cannot react with an equal 
force against the resinous action; this negation of resinous 
reaction is called vitreous electricity, or still more improperly, 
positive electricity. § 36. 
3rd. The earth, as a ponderable body, possesses a powerful 
resinous tension, and the celestial space which surrounds it, not 
| possessing this state, is in the state of minus resinous or vitreous. 
| §§ 14, 36, 40, &c. 
4th. The earth, like every electric globe in the midst of a free 
Space, has its tension at the surface, and this tension may in- 
crease or diminish in certain points, according as the bodies 
placed above have a lesser or greater tension, that is to say, 
according as these bodies are vitreous or resinous in relation to 
the electric mean of the globe. 
5th. Every body situated at the surface of the earth partakes 
* Chap. ii. first part, p. 67. 
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