THE 

 LONDON, EDINBURGH and DUBLIN 



PHILOSOPHICAL MAGAZINE 



AND 



JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 



N' 



[FOURTH SERIES.] 

 JUNE 1852. 



LVIII. On the Physical Character of the Lines of Magnetic 

 Force. By Michael Faraday, Esq., D.C.L., F.R.S. fyc* 

 [With a Plate.] 

 r OTE. — The following paper contains so much of a specula- 

 tive and hypothetical nature, that I have thought it more 

 fitted for the pages of the Philosophical Magazine than those of 

 the Philosophical Transactions. Still it is so connected with, 

 and dependent upon former researches, that I have continued 

 the system and series of paragraph numbers from them to it. 

 I beg, therefore, to inform the reader, that those in the body of 

 the text refer chiefly to papers already published, or ordered for 

 publication, in the Philosophical Transactions ; and that they 

 are not quite essential to him in the reading of the present paper, 

 unless he is led to a serious consideration of its contents. The 

 paper, as is evident, follows Series xxviii. and xxix., now printing 

 in the Philosophical Transactions, and depends much for its 

 experimental support upon the more strict results and conclusions 

 contained in them. 



3243. I have recently been engaged in describing and defi- 

 ning the lines of magnetic force (3070.), i. e. those lines which 

 arc indicated in a general manner by the disposition of iron 

 liliiiL r s or small magnetic needles, around or between magnets ; 

 and I have shown, I hope satisfactorily, how these lines may be 

 taken as exact representants of the magnetic power, both as to 

 disposition and amount; also how they may be recognised by a 

 moving wire in a manner altogether different in principle from 



* Communicated by the Author. 

 Phil. May. S. 4. Vol. 3. No. 20. June 1852. 2 D 



