GALVANIC, OR VOLTAIC ELECTRICITY. 383 



and Davy, directed the inquiries of men to the 

 chemical and physiological properties of electri- 

 city, to the neglect of the still more obvious 

 agency of caloric. Had philosophers studied the 

 cause of solution, combustion, fermentation, and 

 ordinary decomposition, with half the attention 

 bestowed on Electro-Chemistry, they would have 

 discovered that caloric is indispensable to the 

 chemical union of oxygen with combustibles ; 

 of salts with water ; metals with acids, and with 

 each other ; in short, that without caloric, there 

 is no chemical attraction. 



This would have led them to investigate the 

 relations of caloric and electricity, one of the 

 most important problems in physics, from its 

 intimate relation to the whole constitution of 

 nature. If they be only modifications of one 

 and the same universal element, we cannot 

 expect fully to comprehend the most simple 

 phenomena of attraction and repulsion, without 

 understanding its general laws. 



When treating of chemical solution, it was 

 demonstrated that metals are dissolved by the 

 caloric of the strong acids, and combined chemi- 

 cally with them, as certainly, as that salts are 

 dissolved by the caloric of water, and thus chemi- 

 cally combined with it. 



If then there be not two causes of chemical 

 attraction, it is evident, that the same agent 



