68 Biographical Notice of Alexander Volta. 
and to the invention of new ones; the Electroscopes of 
Cavallo, and of De Seameatte, obtained in his hands, the 
greatest exactness; the Electrophorus, and the condenser, 
owed their origin to him. This last apparatus, especially, 
founded on the true principles of electricity, of which it 1s 
the consequence, is to that science, what the microscope is 
to natural history, in permitting us to appreciate the quanti- 
ties of electricity, which by their feeble effects, would have 
entirely escaped the means formerly known. 
The condenser was to shew, at a later period the impor- 
tant part, which the electric agent held in nature and the great 
ag wows of phenomena which produce it, and finally it was 
o become, to Volta himself, the basis of his grand Boao 
a the means of that there isa development of 
electricity on. ay contact of two m 
It was in electricity that Volta found an explanation of 
the greater number of meteorological phenomena 
His hypothesis of the formation of hail, is ingenious, and his 
observations. upon the periodical return of clouds, are not 
without interest; but in general, we must distinguish through- 
out this subject, ‘the theories of the author, from the numer- 
ous, and curious facts, with which he has enriched the sci- 
ence of meteorology, still so imperfect. 
et us turn our attention, for a moment to the labours of 
Volta, relative to chemistry ; ; labours, which are worthy of 
our attention, from their results, and from the Jromene = 
invention which distinguished them. It was h 
ered the inflammable gas of marshes, and he: nated c an 
explanation, the consequence of the former, of the wander- 
ing fires, and of those igneous ee which are some- 
times produced upon the surface of the ground. He has 
vn that they result from the mbotkan of this gas, by 
means of electricity. 
Tt was. a pessicn of the discovery of an inflammable 
mich was observed to issue from a fountain in 1776, 
he true cause of this phenomenon and 
er | ones and which he attributed, not te 
a circumstance ° re al, but to the formation of a gas 
by the Balen gt. Vegetable and animal substances in 
contact with wat 
Thus he shewed that wherever there was muddy gr ground 
or stagnant water, on stirring the bottom, bubbles of this 
gas would ; arise ;. which gas. mp potorearburetied hydrogen. 
