Account of some further Electrical Experiments. 127 



instructed in history, natural philosophy, natural history, and 

 foreign languages. During several days of the week they prac- 

 tise leaping, climbing, rope-dancing, swimming, and other ex- 

 ercises, which Professor Treschow in Copenhagen very appro- 

 priately calls the luxury of education ; but a good oificer will 

 perhaps not regret the time he spent in such exercises. It is an 

 excellent regulation, that tlie cadets neither lodge nor eat in the 

 house ; thev are boarded with respectable people of the town, 

 for the purpose of avoiding the monkishness of a secluHed edu- 

 cation. They wish to bring the young people as nuich as possi- 

 ble into contact with the world, and to break them at an ear'v 

 period of the narrow-mindedness which so circuniscril)cd an occu- 

 ))ation as that of a soldier has a necessary tendency to produce. 

 The correctness of these principles has been confirmed by ex- 

 perience, even in the short space of a few years. So long as the 

 state of Denmark deems it necessary to keep up a great army, 

 and to dedicate so much of its attention to that object, it weie 

 heartily to be wished that all the Danish officers found such % 

 school for their formation as the Military Academy in Chris- 

 tiania. 



XXXIII. Account of some further Electrical Experiments 

 by M. De Nehs, of Mechlin. 



To Mr. Tilloch. 



Sir, — X HAVE lately made an experiment which tends to 

 prove the simple current with an apparatus not insulated by 

 disks. — On placing the chain which conducts the fluid to the 

 ground, in communication with a large plate of lead placed on 

 the table of the apparatus, and applying the hand during the 

 detonations of the small bottle, we feel a succession of small 

 shocks : it then occurred to me to place the other hand on the 

 lower cushion of the apparatus, when I instantly felt the fluid 

 running towards the disk. Here I said to myself, Chance ha» 

 confirmed to me the circle of circulation, announced to me 

 fourteen years since by M. Lugt, a Dutch philosopher, in coa- 

 sequence of several very ingenious experiments made by .an ap- 

 paratus perfectly insulated. The apparatus of Mr. Singer id 

 very well adapted for repeating the two first experiments of Mr. 

 I.ugt, which seem to me to prove incontestably, that the floor 

 docs not furnish the fluid to the disk, but that the wood of the 

 tai)le, and that which supports the disk between thecushions,&c. 

 arc the invisil)lc conductors, which refurnish the fluid excited by 



friction, 



