•t76 Dr. Hare's Second Letter to Prof. Faraday. 



imimporlant as respects a correct idea of the direction, as 

 their length has been shown by Wheatstone to be incompe- 

 tent to jirodiice any perceptible delay. 



70. The dissipation of conductors being one of the most 

 prominent among electrical phsenomena, it appears to me to 

 be an objection to j'our theory, if, while it fails to suggest any 

 process by which this pheenomenon is produced, it assumes 

 premises which seem to be incompatible with the generation 

 of any explosive power. If discharge only involves the resto- 

 ration of polarized ponderable particles to their natural state, 

 the potency of the discharge must be proportionable to the 

 intensity of the antecedent polarity; yet it is through con- 

 ductors liable, as you allege, to polarization of comparatively 

 low intensity (31) that discharge takes place with the highest 

 degree of explosive violence. 



71. Having inquired how your allegation could be true, 

 that discharge brings bodies to their natural state, and yet 

 causes conductors to be dissipated, you reply (34), that dif- 

 ferent effects may result from the same cause, acting with 

 different degrees of intensity, as when by one degree of heat 

 ice is converted into water, by another into steam. But it 

 may be urged, that although, in the case thus cited, different 

 effects are produced, yet that the one is not inconsistent with 

 the other, as were those ascribed to electrical discharges. It 

 is quite consistent that the protoxide of hydrogen, which, per 

 se, constitutes the solid called ice, should, by one degree of 

 calorific repulsion, have the cohesion of its particles so far 

 counteracted as to be productive of fusion ; and yet that a 

 higher degree of the same power should cause them to recede 

 from each other, so as to exist in the aeriform state. 



72. In order to found, upon the influence of various tempe- 

 ratures, a good objection to my argument, it should be shown 

 that while a certain reduction of temperature enables aqueous 

 particles to indulge their innate propensity to consolidation, 

 a still further reduction will cause them, in direct opposition 

 to that propensity, to repel each other so as to form steam. 



73. In your concluding paragraph you allege, ^^ that when 

 ])oiHlerahle particles intervene, during the j^rocess oj dynamic 

 induction, the currents residting from this source do require 

 these particles." 1 presume this allegation is to be explained 

 by the conjecture made by you (1729), that since certain 

 bodies, when interposed, did not interfere with dynamic in- 

 duction, therefore they might be inferred to coopeiate in the 

 transmission of that species of inductive influence. But if the 

 induction takes place without the ponderable matter, is it right 

 to assume that this matter aidSf because it does not prevent 



