74 Additional Notes. 



matters, without either of them being combined with any other ma- 

 terial except with the ethers of heat and light, distinguishes this 

 ethereal explosion from that of most other bodies ; and seems to have 

 been the cause, which prevented the ingenious Dr. Franklin, and 

 others since his time, from ascribing the powerful eifects of the elec- 

 tric battery, and of lightning in bursting trees, inflaming combus- 

 tible materials, and fusing metals, to chemical explosion; which it 

 resembles in every other circumstance, but in the manner of the pre- 

 vious condensation of the materials, so as violently to attract each 

 other, and suddenly set at liberty the heat and light, with which 

 one or both of them were combined. 



3. This combination of vitreous and resinous electric ethers is 

 again destroyed or weakened by the attractions of other bodies; as 

 they separate intirely, or exist in different proportions, forming at- 

 mospheres round conducting and nonconducting bodies; and in this 

 they resemble other combinations of matters; as oxygen and azote, 

 when united in the production of nitrous acid, are again separated by 

 carbone; which attracts the oxygen more powerfully, than that at- 

 tracts the azote, with which it is combined. 



This mode of again separating the combined electric ethers by 

 pressing them, as they surround bodies in different proportions, into 

 each other's atmospheres, as by the glass and cushion, has not been 

 observed respecting the decomposition of other bodies; when their 

 minute particles are brought so near together as to decompose each 

 . other; which has thence probably contributed to prevent this decom- 

 position of the two combined electric ethers from being ascribed to 

 chemical laws; but, as far as we know, the attractive and repulsive 

 atmospheres round the minute particles of bodies in chemical opera- 

 tions may act in a similar manner; as the attractive and repulsive at- 

 mospheres, which accompany the electric ethers surrounding the 

 larger masses of matter, and that hence both the electric and the che- 

 mical explosions are subject to the same laws, and also the decompo- 

 sition again of those particles, which were combined in the act of 

 explosion. 



4. It is probable that this theory of electric and magnetic attractions 



