172 Intelligence and Miscellaneous Articles. 
pel each other, do not evince the similarity of their specific electri- 
cities, until] made more apparent by their possessing a higher charge 
than surrounding objects ; and when they have parted with their su- 
perabundance and attained an equilibrium with surrounding objects 
the repulsion ceases: so in the other case would the attraction cease, 
but the elements of the compound cannot lose their relative super- 
abundance and deficiency :—so that we should consider that the dif- 
ficulty of union of substances and the quantity of additional electrical 
excitement required to make them combine, is a measure of the dif- 
ference of their specific electricities. This theory may be applied also 
to account for a substance evincing one kind of electric energy when 
about to combine with one substance, and the opposite state when 
about to combine with another; thus, according to this view, sulphur 
possesses a greater specific electricity than oxygen and a less specific 
electricity than mercury, and is consequently positive with regard to 
oxygen and negative in relation to mercury. 
26, Woburn Place, London, 2 
August.17,/1835. Epwarp B. Watrorp. 
NOTE ON MR. CHALLIS’S PAPER ON CAPILLARY ATTRACTION. 
The following editorial note was written with the intention of an- 
nexing it to that passage of Mr. Challis’s paper inserted in the present 
number, p. 94, in which mercury is excluded from part of the investiga- 
tion, as being incapable of adhering, like other fluids, to solid bodies. 
We apprehend that it will eventually be found necessary to extend 
this investigation to the case of mercury, which is as capable of ad- 
hering to metals, (to platinum, for example,) as water and oil are of 
adhering to other solids, metals being in fact moistened by mercury. 
See Philosophical Magazine, First Series, vol. xviii. p. 110, note; and 
Quarterly Journal of Science, vol. xx. p.82 et seqg.; vol. xxi, p.231 
et seg. Inthe note in Phil. Mag. here referred to, the perfect con- 
tact of fluids with the solids which they are capable of wetting ts at- 
tributed to their mutual chemical action; and Mr. Daniell, in the 
Quarterly Journal, loc. cit., also ascribes it to the ‘‘ affinity” of the 
fluid for the solid; but Mr. Faraday appears to refer it to an inter- 
mediate species of attraction, ‘‘ in part elective, partaking in its cha- 
racters both of the attraction of aggregation and chemical affinity :’’ 
see his Exp. Res. in Electricity, Sixth Series, par.620, 624, in Phil. 
Trans. for 1834, pp. 66, 67. It is even probable that the results ob- 
tained by Link, as described in the last page of Mr. Challis’s paper, 
may be explained in a similar manner, for the order of the heights to 
which the fluids mentioned ascended is almost precisely that of what 
we should conceive, a priori, would be the relative degrees of an ap- 
proximate chemical attraction of the fluids for glass or its elements. 
The mathematical investigation, we may suggest to Mr. Challis, of 
the entire series of facts related by Mr. Faraday in the memoir alluded 
to, and which are ascribed by that philosopher to the mediate at- 
traction in question, could not fail materially to contribute to the 
elucidation of this obscure though very important and interesting 
subject —E. W. B. 
wi 
