372 On Ice and Freezing Water. [1850. 



had I not been led unawares, and without previous consideration, 

 by the circumstances of the evening on which I had to appear 

 suddenly and occupy the place of another. Now that I have 

 put them on paper, I feel that I ought to have kept them much 

 longer for study, consideration, and, perhaps, final rejection ; 

 and it is only because they are sure to go abroad in one way or 

 another, in consequence of their utterance on that evening, 

 that I give them a shape, if shape it may be called, in this reply 

 to your inquiry. One thing is certain, that any hypothetical 

 view of radiation which is likely to be received or retained as 

 satisfactory, must not much longer comprehend alone certain 

 phenomena of light, but must include those of heat and of 

 actinic influence also, and even the conjoined phenomena of 

 sensible heat and chemical power produced by them. In this 

 respect, a view, which is in some degree founded upon the 

 ordinary forces of matter, may perhaps find a little consideration 

 amongst the other views that will probably arise. I think it 

 likely that I have made many mistakes in the preceding pages, 

 for even to myself, my ideas on this point appear only as the 

 shadow of a speculation, or as one of those impressions on the 

 mind which are allowable for a time as guides to thought and 

 research. He who labours in experimental inquiries knows 

 how numerous these are, and how often their apparent fitness 

 and beauty vanish before the progress and development of real 

 natural truth. 



I am, my dear Phillips, ever truly yours, 

 Royal Institution, April 15, 1846. M. FARADAY. 



On Certain conditions of Freezing Water. A Discourse, $c. * 



[Royal Institution, Friday Evening, June 7, 1850.] 



THE chief object of the discourse was the great, various, and 

 extraordinary forms of affinity which exist between the particles 

 of water. Having experimentally illustrated the combining 

 power of water, and shown how this attraction passes from a 

 physical to a chemical force, Mr. Faraday confined the rest of 

 his discourse to ice, as being that condition of water in which 

 its particles are allowed to associate with each other without 

 the intervention of foreign matter. Such ice as is now imported 

 * Athenaeum, 1850, p. 640. The report is by the author. 



