THE 



EDINBURGH 

 JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 



Art. I. — On the Mechanical Effects produced when a Con- 

 ducting Liquid is electrified in contact with Mercury. In 

 a Letter from J. F. W. Herschel, Esq. Sec. R. S. Lond. 

 F. R. S. Edin. &c. Sic. to Dr Brewster. 



Dear Sir, 

 As I think it the duty of every contributor to science to do 

 all possible justice to his predecessors, as far as their labours 

 become known to him, I beg leave to call the attention of your 

 readers to an interesting paper by Professor Erman of Berlin, 

 published by Gilbert in his Annalen der Physik, vol. xxxii. p. 

 261 — 292, 1809, entitled, Wahrnehmung uber das gleich- 

 seitige entstehen von inechanischen Coheir enz und chemischen 

 Verwandschaften, or " Notice of the simultaneous Production 

 of Mechanical Cohesion and Chemical Affinities ;"" a title from 

 which no one certainly could divine any analogy between the 

 phenomena intended to be treated of by the learned professor 

 and those described in my Bakerian Lecture, On the Motions 

 produced in Fluid Conductors when transmitting the Electric 

 Current. This paper, however, I find has been referred to 

 as anticipating my experiments in toto ; and I therefore owe 

 it to myself, as well as to its author, to enter into some little 

 examination of its contents ; — premising, that, at the time of 

 publishing my experiments, I was totally ignorant that the 

 subject had ever been investigated either by Professor Erman 

 or by any other. 



VOL. II. so. II. aimul 1825. o 



