THE 



AMERICAN 



JOURNAL OF SCIENCE, &c. 



Art. I. — A letter to Prof. Faraday, on cei^tain Theoretical Opin- 

 ions ; by R. Hare, M D., Professor of Chemistry in the Uni- 

 versity of Pennsylvania.* 



Dear Sir, — I have been indebted to your kindness for several 

 pamphlets comprising your researches in electricity, which I have 

 perused with the greatest degree of interest. 



You must be too well aware of the height at which you 

 stand, in the estimation of men of science, to doubt that I enter- 

 tain with diffidence, any opinion in opposition to yours. I may 

 say of you as in a former instance of BerzeUus, that you occupy 

 an elevation inaccessible to unjustifiable criticism. Under these 

 circumstances, I hope that I may, from you, experience the can- 

 dor and kindness which were displayed by the great Swedish 

 chemist in his reply to my strictures on his nomenclature. 



I am unable to reconcile the language which you hold in para- 

 graph 1615, with the fundamental position taken in 1155. Agree- 

 ably to the latter, you believe ordinary induction to be the action 

 of contiguous particles, consisting of a species of polarity, instead 



* To the Editors of the American Journal of Science and Arts, — Gentlemen : I 

 avail myself of the medium of your Journal to address to the celebrated Faraday, 

 a letter on the subject of certain hypothetical inferences which he has made 

 from his late ingenious experimental researches. R. H. 



Vol. XXXVIII, No. 1.— Oct.-Jan. 1839. 1 



