Curiosities of Science. 217 



tling on his paternal estate, Fyne Court, on the Quantock Hills 

 in Somersetshire, he there devoted himself to chemistry, min- 

 eralogy, and electricity, pursuing his experiments wholly inde- 

 pendently of theories, and searching only for facts. In Holwell 

 Cavern, near his residence, he observed the sides and the roof 

 covered with Arragonite crystallisations, when his observations 

 led him to conclude that the crystallisations were the effects, 

 at least to some extent, of electricity. This induced him to 

 make the attempt to form artificial crystals by the same means, 

 which he began in 1807. He took some water from the cave, 

 filled a tumbler, and exposed it to the action of a voltaic bat- 

 tery excited by water alone, letting the platinum-wires of the 

 battery fall on opposite sides of the tumbler from the opposite 

 poles of the battery. After ten days' constant action, he pro- 

 duced crystals of carbonate of lime ; and on repeating the ex- 

 periment in the dark, he produced them in six days. Thus Mr. 

 Crosse simulated in his laboratory one of the hitherto most mys- 

 terious processes of nature. 



He pursued this line of research for nearly thirty years at 

 Fyne Court, where his electrical-room and laboratory were on 

 an enormous scale : the apparatus had cost some thousands of 

 pounds, and the house was nearly full of furnaces. He carried 

 an insulated wire above the tops of the trees around his house 

 to the length of a mile and a quarter, afterwards shortened to 

 1800 feet. By this wire, which was brought into connection 

 with the apparatus in a chamber, he was enabled to see con- 

 tinually the changes in the state of the atmosphere, and could 

 use the fluid so collected for a variety of purposes. In 1816, 

 at a meeting of country gentlemen, he prophesied that, " by 

 means of electrical agency, we shall be able to communicate our 

 thoughts simultaneously with the uttermost ends of the earth." 

 Still, though he foresaw the powers of the medium, he did not 

 make any experiments in that direction, but confined himself 

 to the endeavour to produce crystals of various kinds. He ul- 

 timately obtained forty-one mineral crystals, or minerals uucrys- 

 tallised, in the form in which they are produced by nature, in- 

 cluding one sub-sulphate of copper an entirely new mineral, 

 neither found in nature nor formed by art previously. His be- 

 lief was that even diamonds might be produced in this way. 



Mr. Crosse worked alone in his retreat until 1836, when, 

 attending the meeting of the British Association at Bristol, 

 he was induced to explain his experiments, for which he was 

 highly complimented by Dr. Buckland, Dr. Dalton, Professor 

 Sedgwick, and others.* 



* Mr. Crosse gave to the meeting a general invitation to Fyne Court; one of 

 the first to accept which was Sir Richard Phillips, who, on his return to Brigh- 

 ton, described in a very attractive manner, at the Sussex Institution, Mr. Crosse's 



