1816.] Scientific Intelligence. 165 
French or Latin, and will not be received after the Ist of 
October, 1816. 
Prize of Galvanism.—Nothing has come to the Institute de- 
serving the annual prize, founded to recompense the labours un- 
dertaken in order to advance this important part of science. 
Yet the subject is far from exhausted. The Class conceives that 
it may be necessary to call the attention of philosophers to some of 
the points still wanting to complete that theory. 
The experiments on the action of the two poles of the Voltaic 
battery, and on its influence in the combination and decomposition 
of bodies, have been carried very far; but another object, which 
this naturally recalls, has perhaps been too much forgot. It has 
been long since observed, that in chemical combinations made 
without the direct assistance of electricity, and between substances 
which before their combination give no very sensible sign of elec- 
tricity, the compounds obtained were in a very evident electrical 
state, susceptible of accumulation, and of being measured by a 
condenser. 
It would therefore be important, as it has been determined in a 
great many cases what combinations result from the action of a cal- 
culable electricity, to determine on the contrary what measure of 
electricity results from different combinations in which bodies 
passed to a sensible and calculable electric state. A tolerably com- 
plete set of experiments undertaken with this view would probably 
possess considerable interest and utility. 
Another phenomenon, not less interesting, and which parti- 
cularly concerns the animal economy, is that which manifests itself 
»when alternate portions of nerves and muscles of the same animal, 
or of different animals, are capable of forming a circuit, the con- 
tacts of which produce the same excitations which result from a 
circle composed of metals intermediate between the muscles and 
nerves. 
This experiment, which originated with Galvani, and was after- 
wards repeated by different philosophers, to which obviously belong 
the phenomena of the torpedo, analysed at last, and reduced under 
the theory of the electric plates of the pile, by Volta, may perhaps 
by its developemeats, and peculiar kind of experiments, be extended 
and applied to different circumstances of the animal economy, so 
as to throw new light on the still so obscure theory of the nervous 
influence on the organic actions, and on the result of these actions. 
We shall not attempt to extend this idea further; but it seemed 
proper to call the attention of philosophers and physiologists to a 
first experiment, the developements of which have been hitherto 
neglected, and which is still confined to a first fact, the conse- 
uences of which seem capable of being much further extended. 
e first experiments of M. de Humboldt on the changes which 
the animal liquors, just after issuing from their vessels, experience 
from the action of galvanic excitements, are a proof of what phy- 
siologists may hope from a new set of experiments undertaken with 
the views just alluded to. 
