Electricity. 339 



temperature, and if the circuit is closed, to a thermo-electric current. 

 His experiments show that on the one hand the water of the ocean un-. 

 der the action of the sun being submitted to a continual evaporation 

 must affect the calorific and the electric state of the earth, and develop 

 constant thermo-electric currents. On the other hand the enormous 

 quantity of vapor which is lifted into the atmosphere is there subjected 

 to incessant variations in respect to the surfaces of contact with the air, 

 of its vesicles, rain-drops, &c. Its reduction from a state of extreme 

 and almost molecular tenuity to a state where by sudden condensation 

 it forms larger rain-drops, enables it to actually produce enormous quan- 

 tities of electricity until the drops fall in turn upon the surface of the 

 globe from which they were elevated. Thus we have at once on the one 

 hand the existence of a constant source of the thermo electricity circulat- 

 ing around the earth, and on the other hand a permanent cause of at- 

 mospheric electricity. (Harper's Annual Record, 1876.") 



The fact is, there is no sort of motion whatever that is not accom- 

 panied by electrical action. If there is such a substance as ether per- 

 vading all space, including the pores and intermolecular openings in 

 ponderable bodies, certainly when we see the ponderable bodies move 

 we can easily believe their enclosed ether moves too. That this ether is 

 the vehicle of heat, light and induction, is as good as proved. That it 

 is the body which moves in the case of current electricity, and the body 

 which is on a strain when positive and negative tensions are exhibited, 

 is at least a reasonable hypothesis. We have seen that no sort of mo- 

 tion can end partly or wholly without setting up another sort. As the 

 ether is the most mobile of all bodies, the motion of other bodies is com- 

 municated to it on all occasions. No ponderable body can move with- 

 out subjecting its enclosed ether to new conditions as to contact, heat, 

 pressure, friction, and the different electrical states of the other bodies 

 in its vicinity. These new conditions react upon the ether enclosed in 

 such body to produce new conditions, and hence electrical movements 

 in it. 



Graston Plante considers Electricity to be a purely mechanical motion 

 of ponderable matter, and its discharges to consist in the extremely rapid 

 flow or transport of a very small quantity of matter, whether we con- 

 sider the electric spark the voltaic arc or electrical discharge in general. 

 The matter discharged, he says, is not electric matter, ' ' but electrified 

 matter borrowed both from the substance itself from which it detaches 

 itself, and from the center ( medium ) through which it passes." This 

 is without doubt true of many of the visible effects of electric action, as 

 the flow of fine particles from one pole to another in the arc light, the 

 electric spark and lightning in the air, the electric glow, electric brush, 

 &c. But behind these phenomena is the energy which produces them, 



