Experimental 'Researches in Electricity. 469 



republic of science in general, to expatiate on the subject of Pro- 

 fessor Faraday's discoveries and researches in electrical science. In 

 the former character, our readers have become acquainted with his 

 contributions to the knowledge of one of the most active and per- 

 vading, and at the same time most recondite of the principles which 

 govern the material world, by the abstracts which have from time 

 to time appeared in our pages, of his Expeiimental Researches in 

 Electricity, as they have been communicated in successive series, to 

 the Royal Societj-, and from our having reprinted several of those 

 series entire ; while as forming part of the scientific world at large, 

 they must necessarily participate in the wide diffusion of his most 

 laboriously earned reputation. We do not intend, on the present 

 occasion, to offer any opinion of our own, on the value and character 

 of Mr. Faraday's labours in electricity and the cognate sciences, but 

 we will at once refer the matter to an arbiter, from whose award, in 

 such a case, few will be disposed to appeal, — and stamp a character 

 on the present article, by giving additional currency to the judg- 

 ment pronounced by the Rev. Professor Whewell, who, in his 

 " History of the Inductive Sciences," has affirmed, with respect to 

 the great principle of the identity of electrical and chemical action, 

 that " The confirmation of Davy's discoveries by Faraday is of the 

 nature of Newton's confirmation of the views of Borelli and Hooka 

 respecting gravity, or," [and this, we may remark, is scarcely infe- 

 rior praise] " like Young's confirmation of the undulatory theory of 

 Huyghens." 



We have selected an opinion pronounced on the chemical bearings 

 of Mr. Faraday's labours, because we think, that in consequence of 

 the ease with which brilliant and even marvellous experimental re- 

 sults in the magnetic relations of electricity may now be obtained, 

 his contributions to the science of Electro-chemistry, are perhaps, by 

 many of the lovers of electricity as well as chemistry, at the present 

 time not sufficiently attended to. It would have been easy, how- 

 ever, to have cited opinions not less emphatic, on Mr. Faraday's 

 discoveries in magneto-electricity, the other great branch of the 

 general science to which his results, in the first eight series at least, 

 chiefly refer. Were we to offer an opinion of our own on the con- 

 tents of the subsequent series, we should allude to the importance 

 of the subject of Induced Electricity, as it has been treated by our 

 author ; in reference, especially, to the philosophy, in all cases, 

 (whether electrical or not) of what has been called distant action. 

 On this particular subject, one of almost universal extent, science, 

 we are convinced, is yet pregnant with discovery. 



The volume now before us consists of Mr. Faraday's Fourteen 

 Series of Experimental Researches In Electricity, which have ap- 

 peared In the Philosophical Transactions during the last seven years ; 

 his chief reason for their publication in this form, being stated, In 

 the Preface, to luive been " the desire to supply at a moderate price 

 the whole of these pajjcrs, with an Index, to those who may desire 

 to have them." There arc some other passages in the preface which 



