204 AMOUNT OF ELECTRICITY 



alike. The equivalent weights of bodies are those quan- 

 tities of them which contain equal quantities of electri- 

 city ; electricity determining the equivalent number, 

 because it determines the combining force.* 



The same elegant and correct experimentalist has 

 shown that zinc and platinum wires, one-eighteenth of 

 an inch in diameter., and about half an inch long, dipped 

 into water in which is mixed sulphuric acid so weak 

 that it is not sensibly sour to the tongue, will evolve 

 more electricity in one-twentieth of a minute than is 

 given by thirty turns of a large and powerful plate elec- 

 trical machine in full action, a quantity which, if passed 

 through the head of a cat, is sufficient to kill it as by a 

 flash of lightning. Pursuing this interesting inquiry 

 yet farther, it is found that a single grain of water con- 

 tains as much electricity as could be accumulated in 

 800,000 Leyden jars, each requiring thirty turns of the 

 large machme of the Hoyal Institution to charge it, 

 a quantity equal to that which is developed from a 

 charged thunder- cloud. " Yet we have it under perfect 

 command, can evolve, direct, and employ it at plea- 

 sure ; and when it has performed its full work of electro- 

 lisation, it has only separated the elements of a single 

 grain of water." 



It has been argued by many that the realities of 

 science will not admit of anything like a poetic view 

 without degrading its high office; that poetry, being 

 the imaginative side of nature, has nothing in common 

 with the facts of experimental research, or with' the 

 philosophy which generalises the discoveries of severe 

 induction. If our science was perfect, and laid bare to 

 our senses all the secrets of the inner world; if our 

 philosophy was infallible, and always connected one fact 

 with another through a long series up to the undoubted 

 cause of all then poetry, in the sense we now use the 



* Experimental Researches : Faraday. 



