528 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



successive weeks. The wire communicating with the iron rod 

 which made the discharge was 6,732 feet in length, supported on 

 baked sticks, as was also the wire which communicated with the 

 coating of the phial, which was 3,868 feet long. The observers 

 were distant from each other two miles. The result of this ex- 

 periment was a demonstration that the circuit performed by the 

 electric fluid was four miles, (viz :) two miles of wire and two 

 miles of dry ground. A gun was discharged at the instant of the 

 explosion, and the observers had stop watches in their hands to 

 note the moment when they felt the shock of the electric fluid. 

 But as far as their experiments went, the motion of the electric 

 fluid was instantaneous through a wire of 12,274 feet. 



[Philosophical Transactions of the Roj'al Society of London, 1783.) 



A communication in Italian on the subject of electricity, " Del 

 mode di render sensibilissima la pin debole Elettricita sia Natu- 

 rale, sia Artificiale. By Mr. Alexander Volta, Prof of Exper'l 

 Philosophy in Como, &c., &c.; communicated by the Right Hon. 

 George Earl Cowper, F. R. S." Read March 14th, 1782. 



In the appendix Volta says, " I have at last succeeded in ob- 

 taining distinct signs of electricity from the simple evaporation of 

 water, and from various chemical fermentations. Knowing these 

 facts to be no less interesting than new, I esteem it not inoppor- 

 tune to give a faithful account of my experiments. The first of 

 these were made in Paris, in company with two Physical Illu- 

 minati, members of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Messrs. 

 Lavoisier and De La Place. 



He called his apparatus for showing this electricity a volta. 

 He was born of a noble family in 1745. In 1769 he addressed 

 Beccaria " De vi attractiva ignis electric! ac phenominis inde- 

 pendentibus." In 1801 Napoleon invited him to Paris where he 

 exhibited his discoveries to the members of the National Institute. 

 He died in 1826. 



ARTS OF THE ANCIENTS. 



They made as good and sometimes (as' the Wootz and the Da- 

 mascus,) better steel than is made in 1854. They knew how to 

 give to copper a hardness almost equal to steel. That we have 

 lost. 



