ADDRESS OF PROF. W. B. ROGERS. 79 



new instrument of research to yet untried purposes of- chemical 

 analysis. Davy was a poet as well as a philosopher, and we can 

 imagine the glow of poetic enthusiasm which warmed his soul when 

 he saw for the first time the fiery globules of potassium gather- 

 ing and exploding around the electric pole. And well might his 

 prescient thought exult, for from this and his immediately succeed- 

 ing discoveries it became established that the fixed alkalies and the 

 earths, till then supposed to be elementary bodies, out of which the 

 solid crust of our globe is constituted, are nothing more than the 

 rust or cinders; that is, the oxides of metals and metalloidal bodies. 



Passing from the years 1807-^08, when these splendid discov- 

 eries were made, we mark for several years no further brilliant 

 achievement in electrical science, but follow the ingenious labors of 

 distinguished experimenters in improving the efficiency of the 

 voltaic apparatus, multiplying its applications and giving a broader 

 basis to the laws of electro-chemistry. 



In a little more than a decade after the era illustrated by Davy's 

 experimental genius, the progress of our science was signalized 

 by anotlier momentous event, the discovery or more properly re- 

 discovery by the Danish philosopher. Oersted, of the directive 

 influence of the voltaic current on the magnetic needle, a fact which, 

 first noticed by Romagnosi at the beginning of the century, * had 

 been practically overlooked, but which as discovered anew and 

 more fully investigated by Oersted, gave him a celebrity such as 

 a life-long devotion to science has often failed to secure. 



A relation between electricity and magnetism had long been 

 suspected, but as yet no demonstration of the nature of their con- 

 nection had been attained. The electric pile of Volta and the 

 various forms of galvanic battery, exhibiting opposite electrical 



*In the address as deUvered, no reference was made to this anticipation of 

 Oersted's discovery ; and I am Indebted for the correction of the generally 

 accepted history, to Mr. William B. Taylor's able Historical Sketch, In the Smith- 

 sonian Report for 1878.— W. B. R. 



