382 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



moyens de perfectionner le fil conducteur. Le Reve etait magnifique ; 

 Dieu a permis qu'il se soit realise que sa volonte nous permette d'on profiter. 

 Les nouis des deux freres Field, des Morse, des Peter Cooper, des Moses 

 Taylor, des Marshall 0. Roberts, et des Chandler White, appartiennent 

 desormais a I'histoire ; apres Dieu ils sont les auteurs de I'union fraternelle 

 de deux continents. ' Audaces fortmia juvat.' La rcussite de leur 

 audacieux projet les a tout-a-coup fait sortir de I'ombre pour leur donner 

 relief glorieux de Heros de la Science." 



The great agent, electricity, so long a study, yielding more and more 

 development, wants great attention still. Let us look back upon our first 

 steps in this great science, and now earnestly look for more light ! It 

 extends in all directions. It is attraction and repulsion ; it is vitreous, 

 positive, resinous, negative, electro-magnetic, frictional, animal (flesh or 

 fish), chemical, thermo, and why not psycho (for ice at one end and heat at 

 the other, of a metal rod, produce it,) cohesion also, for electricity results 

 from all chemical solution and aggregation, as well as from all motion. 

 Heat and light are parts, but as latent heat, it belongs to all bodies. 

 Cabeus, more than 200 years ago, gave us the natural magneto-elect icity 

 of the earth ; it was one grand magnet ; it is so called from Magnesia, where 

 they believed the loadstone was first found. Lucretius says, 



" Quern magnetem vocant nomine Graii, 



Magnetem quia sit patrus in montibus ortus." 



Plato said that the power of the magnet to communicate its virtue to iron 

 was understood ; they formed a chain of iron rings, which, when mag- 

 netized, adhered to each other. The Chinese understood both its ad- 

 hesive power and its polarity, many centuries before the Christian 

 era. Pliny thought that the magnet had medical virtues — that it cured 

 sore eyes and hums ! William Gilbert's " Essay on a New Physiology of 

 Magnetic Bodies," was published in London in 1600, and at Sedan, in 

 1630, and it is the most remarkable work on the subject that had yet 

 appeared. He has never had the credit he deserved. 



A magnet, like certain polypes, has, when divided, the same positive and 

 negative poles, so that supposing one magnetized atom divided, each part 

 would still have its poles, or anode and cathode. We test this by the com- 

 mon experiment of piercing a card with electricity ; the hole is not made 

 as by all mechanical processes, i. e., from either side through, but we find 

 a burr on both sides, showing that the positive and negative parted in the 

 centre of the card and exploded in opposite directions. So the atom of 

 water, compot^ed as it is of two parts of hydrogen and one of oxygen, is 

 formed into water by the electricities, and one drop of which (says Fara- 

 day), contains enough of them to make a ihvndei storm, when suitably 

 separated. 



Gravitation, or as La Place calls it, pesanteur, which we translate by the 

 word weight, has a velocity of not less than fift]/ millions of times greater 

 than that of light ! So that while light requires 9^- years to reach us 

 from one of the nearest fixed stars — No. 61, in Cygni — pesanteur reaches 

 us in Jive seconds. 



