, Dr. Harems Deflagrator and Calorimotor. 95 



I should not be surprised, if the coils when insulated by 

 the glass jars, should form a circuit with your other appara- 

 tus, better, than when immersed in the troughs. You will 

 observe that when recently lifted from out of the acid, the 

 air insulates the coils ; while the pieces of wood used to 

 keep the copper from touching the Zinc, act to a certain 

 extent like the moistened cloth in Volta's original pile. — ■ 

 When in this situation, the poles will affect an electrome- 

 ter much more powerfully, than when the coils are im- 

 mersed ; though in one case, the igniting power will burn 

 a platina wire of one eigth of an inch in thickness, in the 

 other it will not burn Dutch gold leaf. 



In my memoir, on a new theory of galvanism, published 

 in your Journal is the following passage : "According to my 

 view, caloric and electricity may be distinguished by the 

 following characteristics. The former permeates all mat- 

 ter more or less, though with very different degrees of 

 facility. It radiates through air with immeasurable ce- 

 lerity, and distributing itself through the interior of bo- 

 dies, communicates a reciprocally repellent power, to 

 atoms, but not to masses.* Electricity does not radiate 

 in or through any matter, and while it pervades some 

 bodies, as metals, with almost infinite velocity ; by others 

 it is so far from being conducted, that it can pass through 

 them only by a fracture or perforation. Distributing itself of 

 choice over surfaces only,f it causes reaction between mas- 

 ses, but not between the particles of the same mass. The 

 disposition of the last mentioned principle (electricity) to 

 get off by neighbouring conductors, and of the other (caloric) 

 to combine with the adjoining matter or to escape by radia- 

 tion, would prevent them from being collected at the positive 

 pole, if not in combination with each other. Were it not 

 for a modification of their properties consequent to some 

 such union, they could not, in piles of thousands of pairs, be 

 carried forwards through the open air and moisture, the 



* It cannot be pretended that electricity expands the gold leaves of an 

 Electrometer when it renders them divergent, or that caloric causes any 

 repulsion between the ignited masses which it expands. 



t It is only when under a great restraint, that electricity enters the pores 

 of metallic wires and deflagrates them. If it exist otherwise than on the 

 surfaces of conductors, why does a hollow metallic sphere take as large a 

 charge as a solid one- 



