132 APPENDIX 1. 



certainly ought not to be disregarded as long as the 

 close connection which they seem to indicate be- 

 tween the two agents has not otherwise proved a 

 fallacy. Nor is it by any means impossible to frame 

 an electrical hypothesis of the nervous agent such 

 as would embrace that newly-discovered feature of 

 it, which has formed the subject of this lecture 

 its comparative sluggishness. If the electro-motive 

 molecules, by which the speaker has tried to account 

 for the electro-motive effects of the nerves, muscles, 

 and electrical organs viz., minute centres of chemi- 

 cal action, all arranged regularly so as to turn 

 homologous sides the same way are conceived to 

 act upon each other electrically, mutually deter- 

 mining their position of equilibrium and controlling 

 their deviations from it, in such a system, though 

 electricity were the connecting link of the whole 

 and the means of transmitting power through it, 

 the rate of transmission would be independent of 

 that of electricity, and might in proportion to it be 

 almost infinitesimal ; it might, indeed, be what the 

 rate of transmission of the nervous agent really is. 



The speaker concluded by exhibiting a model of 

 such a system in which the electro-motive molecules 

 were represented by astatic needles ; a more detailed 

 account of which, however, cannot well be given 

 here. 



