Miscellanies. So 
Among other reasons, may be mentioned the fact, that when the 
British Journals arrive in this country, many of their most valuable 
articles are selected and published in the daily papers, and we have 
been for years in the way of seeing extracts thus published here, as 
interesting foreign matter, which might have been, had the editors 
known it, given to their readers months before from the pages of the 
American Journal. Articles, filling whole columns, have been thus 
unconsciously furnished their readers by our worthy friends of the 
National Gazette, and other daily prints. 
CHEMISTRY, Nc. 
Extracted and translated by Prof. J. Griscom. 
1. Rapid sketch of the present state of Exnctriciry.—Professor 
A. De La Rive has published, in four successive numbers of the 
Bibliotheque Universelle, for the year past, an able historical view of 
the principal discoveries made in electricity within the last few years. 
His memoir concludes with the following Résumé. 
In terminating this historical sketch which we have endeavored to 
render as complete as possible, it will not perhaps be deemed amiss 
if we present, in a few words, the state in which it leaves the science 
of electricity. 
ist. ‘Two different principles are acknowledged to exist in elec- 
tricity ; the laws of action to which these principles give rise have 
been determined, both when they are isolated and at rest, and when 
they are in motion in order to unite. But the nature of them has 
not yet been determined : nothing has yet been done but to advance 
hypotheses which are still unsatisfactory,—such especially as that 
which regards them as very subtle fluids, endowed with certain dis- 
tinct properties. It is probable that they are rather, both of them, 
different modifications of the ethereal matter which fills the universe, 
and whose vibrations constitute light; modifications, the nature of 
which cannot be known until the most intimate properties of electri- 
city have been more thoroughly studied and ascertained. 
2d. It has been successfully determined that magnetism is only 
the result of natural electric currents. But what is the disposition of. 
these currents in magnetised bodies? What is the cause which gives 
rise to them, and what is the reason that a very small number of bo- 
dies only is susceptible of the magnetic virtue? ‘These are questions 
which cannot yet be answered. 
