Notives respecting New Books. 453 
this coloured fluid is poured into another glass containing a few 
drops of lemon-juice, it instantly becomes like white-wine, or co- 
lourless. The Italian mountebanks have used their knowledge 
of this fact to delude the vulgar or the ignorant. Professor Bran- 
chi relates many other curious phenomena, and refutes many ge- 
nerally received erroneous opinions respecting the colouring mat- 
ter of these woods. But of a work which consists eatirely of facts 
and origival experiments, without any admixture of fine-spun 
theories, it is impossible to eonvey any adequate or just idea by 
means of a brief analysis: we must therefore be content here to 
close the notive we have been induced to take of this highly in- 
genious and scientific work. 
An Essay on Electricity, by Fexprnany Extcr, Doctor in 
Philosophy and Medicine, Member of the College of Philoso- 
phy and Polite Literature, formerly Assistant Professor of 
Experimental Philosophy in the University of Genoa, Rector 
and Professor of Philosophy in the College of Cava, Ge— 
Genoa 1817, 
This is a very clear and comprehensive view of the history and 
principal phenomena of electricity and galvanism—a work which 
must be of great utility in lialy, where books of science are very 
scarce and dear, where communication with men of science is 
difficult, and where the votaries of pleasure greatly preponderate 
over the few and comparatively obscure admirers of experimental 
philosophy, physical truth, or the phenomena of nature. It is 
not indeed to be expected, that any branch of human knowledge 
which requires the exercise exclusively of the rational faculties 
ean flourish in a country devoted solely to sensual enjoyments, to 
the slavery of fashion, and to a puerile luxurv in dress more 
characteristic of people just emerging from barbarism, than of 
those who have reached the noontide of civilization. We need 
not therefore be surprised that all chemical and other scientific 
knowledge is confined to the Professors of the colleges ; and it 
must always remain so when a ballad-singer and a fiddler can find 
500 auditors to attend their lectures, while at the lectures of an 
enlightened chemist there are only three ragged boys.—Professor 
Elice however has been more fortunate, and has been honoured 
by the attention of some persons of rank: he has therefore pur- 
sued his researches with more spirit; and from the sum of his la- 
bours he has extracted this Compendium, and systematically 
condensed much varied information on electricity into 70 pages. 
He adopts in general the Franklinian theory, and admits with 
candour some of its insuperable difficulties. In speaking of 
the identity of effect which both positive and negative electri- 
city have on the animal ceconomy, he confesses his inability to 
conceive (or to reconcile this hypothesis with the phenomena) 
Ffs how 
