92 STUDIES IN ELECTRO-PHYSIOLOGY: 



paper, so arranged as to form a flat Leyden jar of large 

 surface, and constructed to give any capacity that may be 

 required. It may be shown thus 



Fig. 2. 



a, a 1 , a 2 , b, b\ b z are square pieces of tinfoil separated by 

 sheets of thin paper steeped in melted paraffin wax. The 

 series a, a 1 , a 2 are connected together, and so are the 

 series b, b l , b*. A and B thus become connected with 

 what may be regarded as the inside and outside coatings of 

 a Leyden jar, and by putting one pole of a battery to A, 

 and the other pole to B, we can communicate a charge to 

 the plates the quantity of which will depend (1) directly 

 upon the electromotive force of the cells used, (2) directly 

 upon the total surface of each series of conducting plates 

 opposed to each other, (3) inversely as the distance between 

 each pair of plates, and (4) upon the nature of the in- 

 sulating material used to separate the conducting plates." 

 Condensers are conventionally represented by parallel 

 lines, i.e. 



Fig. 3. 



Now, the electrostatic capacity of a line is unequally 

 distributed, and its working conditions are naturally 

 affected by this distribution. A circuit may be made up 



