218 Dr. Hare on the Difference beliaeeti 



lation, while arrangements more favourable to insulation, as in 

 "De Luc's Electric Column, ai'e incompatible with a copious 

 supply of the imponderable matter. 



Pi'obably upon an analogous ability to produce or annul, to 

 promote or retard, chemical reaction, the efficacy of animal 

 and vegetable organization is founded, being obviously depen- 

 dent on an arrangement of masses. The voltaic series of a 

 gymnotus is evidently an animal organ, and its analogy with 

 the voltaic series produced by human ingenuity induces me to 

 consider the latter in the same class of agents as the organs 

 by which life is supported. 



I should have expected, that in establishing the highly inter- 

 esting fact that every elementary equivalent has the same 

 quantity of electricity, the ingenious author of this discovery 

 would have adverted to the analogous observations of Petit and 

 Dulong respecting the specific heat of elementary atoms. It 

 strikes me as important, that similar conclusions should have 

 been arrived at by such high authority, both as respects caloric 

 and the electric fluid. I am surprised that Faraday should 

 appear to have overlooked this analogy in the explanation of 

 the practical results which he has obtained. 



No hypothesis appears to be more generally sanctioned at 

 this time among chemists than that which ascribes the aeriform 

 state to a union between caloric and ponderable matter. When 

 hydrogen unites with oxygen, caloric is evolved. It follows 

 that when these substances are made to resume the gaseous 

 form, caloric must be supplied to them. 



When it is considered that the inferences of Petit and Du- 

 long, respecting the specific caloric, and those of Faraday re- 

 specting the electricity combined with ponderable equivalents, 

 tend to demonstrate the coexistence in them of equivalent at- 

 mospheres of each of those imponderable fluids, does it not 

 authorize a surmise that in the voltaic current they may be 

 associated ; and that with those equivalent measures of elec- 

 tricity which Faraday has shown to pass, corresponding por- 

 tions of caloric are imparted? The idea of Berzelius, '^that 

 the heat and light evolved during poweyful combinations, are in 

 consequence of an electric discharge at the same moment taking 

 place" being cited by Faraday in the language of this quota- 

 tion, he observes, that it " is strictly in accordance with his 

 view of the quantity of electricity associated with the particles 

 of matter." To me it appears to be no less in accordance 

 with the idea that heat and light are associated with those 

 atoms to a commensurate extent ; and since, by the premises, 

 electricity reacts with them, they may be presumed to react 

 with electricity. 



