126 Crosse's Expe7imentsrwith the Voltaic Battery. 



and gaseous systems. It is to determine whether this be or not 

 the case, as far as human faculties can determine, to ascertain 

 what rank in the tree of science electricity is to hold; to en- 

 deavor to find out to what useful purposes it might be applied, 

 that I conceive is the object of your Society, and I shall at all 

 times be ready and willing, as a member, to contribute my quota 

 of information to its support, knowing well, that however little it 

 might be, it will be as kindly received as it is humbly offered. 

 It is most unpleasing to my feelings to glance at myself as an in- 

 dividual, but I have met with so much virulence and abuse, so 

 much calumny and misrepresentation, in consequence of the ex- 

 periments which I am about to detail, and which it seems in this 

 nineteenth century a crime to have made, that I must state, not 

 for the sake of myself (for I utterly scorn all such misrepresenta- 

 tions,) but for the sake of truth and the science which I follow, 

 that I am neither an '' Atheist," nor a "Materialist," nor a "self 

 imagined creator," but a humble and lowly reverencer of that 

 Great Being, whose laws my accusers seem wholly to have lost 

 sight of. More than this, it is my conviction, that science is only 

 valuable as a mean to a greater end. I can assure you, sir, that I 

 attach no particular value to any experiment that I have made, 

 and that my feelings and habits are much more of a retiring than 

 an obtruding character ; and I care not if what I have done be 

 entirely overthrown, if truth be elicited. The following is a plain 

 and correct account of the experiments alluded to. 



In the course of my endeavors to form artificial minerals by a 

 long continued electric action on fluids holding in solution such 

 substances as were necessary to my purpose, I had recourse to 

 every variety of contrivance which I could think of, so that, on 

 the one hand, I might be enabled to keep up a never-failing elec- 

 trical current of greater or less intensity or quantity, or both, as 

 the case seemed to require ; and on the other hand, that the solu- 

 tions made use of should be exposed to the electric action in the 

 manner best calculated to effect the object in view. Amongst 

 other contrivances, I constructed a wooden frame, of about two 

 feet in height, consisting of four legs proceeding from a shelf at 

 the bottom, supporting another at the top, and containing a tliird 

 in the middle. Each of these shelves was about seven inches 

 square. The upper one was pierced with an aperture, in which 

 was fixed a funnel of Wedgwood ware, within which rested a 



