126 Crosse’s E'xperiments with the Voltaie Battery. 
and gaseous systems. It is to determine whether this be or not 
the case, as far as human faculties can determine, to ascertain 
what rapk in-the tree of science electricity is to hold; to en- 
_ deavor to find out to what useful purposes it might be. spplieg, 
that I conceive is the object of your Society, and I shall at all 
times be ready and willing, as a member, to contribute my quota 
of information to its support, knowing well, that however little it 
might | be, it will be as kindly received as it is humbly offered. 
- It is most unpleasing to my feelings to glance at myself as an in- 
dividual, but I have met with so much virulence and abuse, sq % 
_much calumny and misrepresentation, in consequence of the ex- 
periments which I am about to detail, and which it seems in this 
nineteenth century a crime to have made, that I must state, not 
for the sake of myself (for I utterly scorn all such misrepresenta- 
tions, ) but for the sake of truth and the science which I follow, 
that I am neither an “ Atheist,” nor a “ Materialist,” nor a. “ self 
imagined creator,” but a humble and lowly reverencer of that. 
Great Being, whose laws my accusers seem wholly to have lost 
sight of. More than this, it is my conviction, that science is only 
valuable as amean to a greater end. I can assure you, sir, that I 
attach no particular value’ to any experiment that I have made, 
and that my feelings and habits are much more of a retiring than 
an obtruding character; and I care not if what I have done be 
entirely overthrown, if truth he elicited. The folowing 2 isa plain 
and correct account of t the experiments alluded to 
the course of my endeavors to form artificial shinerals by a 
long continued electric action on fluids holding i in solution such. 
substances as were necessary to my purpose, I had recourse. to 
every variety ef contrivance which I could think of, so that, on 
the one hand, I might be enabled to keep up a never-failing elec- 
trical current of greater or less intensity or quantity, or both, as 
the case seemed to require; and on the other hand, that the solu- 
tions made use of should be exposed to the electric action in the 
manner best calculated to effect the object in view. Amongst 
other contrivances, I constructed a wooden frame, of about two 
feet in height, consisting of four legs proceeding from a shelf at 
the bottom, supporting another at the top, and containing a third 
in the middle. Each of these shelves was about seven inches 
square. The upper one was pierced with an aperture, in which 
was fixed a funnel of W Wedgwood ware, within which rested. 
