564 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



coal. Now even if the zinc, when burned in the battery, evolves 

 six times as much force as when burned under the boiler, it only 

 equals steam in point of economy. But its proportionate value 

 in the battery, though not precisely ascertained, does not nearly 

 approach this estimate, while in the production of a given power, 

 in so-called successful galvanic engineering, the cost of zinc was 

 nearly two hundred times greater than the cost of coal. 



A recent galvanic engine, in behalf of which the most sanguine 

 hopes and liberal patronage have been manifested, has demon- 

 strated in its so far complete failure as a motor, the stereotyped 

 fact, taught by all its predecessors, that new combinations and 

 complications do not materially decrease the cost of the original 

 power. Whether change of polarity, or the demagnetizing of 

 masses of iron without change of polarity, or the adoption of the 

 arrangement supposed to exist in the production of muscular, or 

 of any other natural action, are employed, so long as motion is 

 only derivable from the action of the galvanic battery as it now 

 exists, electrical, cannot compete with steam engines. But it is 

 unphilosophical to conclude the matter here. Boats, and loco- 

 motives, and stationary engines of considerable magnitude, have 

 established the fact that this motor can be employed; its very 

 abundance and amazing energy indicate that its creator designed 

 it to yield to the mastery of mind, but its subtlety, and the mys- 

 tery which overshadows even its most common phenomena, teach 

 us that long and diligent research is the price of such a servant. 

 Either the producers of the electric current must be very consid- 

 erably cheapened, or that current must be obtained on a new 

 basis, before success can be insured. The perhaps existing know- 

 ledge of that basis, like the ancient knowledge of the vacuum, 

 may precede its satisfactory appliance by centuries. 



It Avould appear, then, that the age of electric locomotion, is 

 not chimerical, but distant. 



Whether electricity is, or is not at the foundation of all the 

 physical changes promoted by the vai'ious qualities and states we 

 call caloric, galvanism, attraction, affinity, etc., is not an essen- 

 tial question in this discussion. Caloric, whether it be a primary 

 or a produced force, is by far the most adaptable and tractable of 

 the natural motors. 



Its power may be applied either as it performs a labor to which 

 nature has already set it apart, as in the case of wind, or by gene- 

 rating it as required, through the chemical process of combus- 

 tion. 



