ON ELECTRICAL CHARGES AND DISCHARGES. 



285 



two electricities of the interior faces of its coatings, mutually 

 destroying each other by communication : but this is not ' 



quite accurate. In fact experience teaches us, that there is 

 a revivification of electricity even between one of the faces of 

 a plate and its coating, when we come to take it off after 

 having successively charged and discharged it. Even the Electrophorus, 

 fundamental property of the electrophorus of Volta is con- 

 nected Avith this phenomenon, if we consider the electricity 

 imprinted on the plate as occasioning a charge there, which 

 is true at least with respect to one part of this electricity; 

 and the disk as a coating, by means of which we destroy 

 this charge in touching it before lifting it up. By this se- 

 paration the coating or disk is made to exhibit an electricity 

 of the opposite kind to that which it had when it was in con- 

 tact with the charged insulating plate ; and on the con^'ary 

 the face of the plate exhibits the same kind of electricity, as 

 the coating had before the discharge, and which then conse- 

 quently was only applied to this face. It is clear from this, 

 that the discharge has not actually taken away the electri- 

 city, that was applied to this face ; and occasioned the charge 

 of the plate ; and that it has done nothing more than oblige 

 it, from electricity of the coating, which it was before, to 

 become electricity of the face of the insulating body, and in 

 this quality rest itself against another contrary electricity, 

 which was formed by the discharge of the interior surface of 

 the coating : in the same manner as that of the other strata, 

 which we conceive in the insulating body, rests after the dis- 

 charge on the electricity that was applied to the face of the 

 contiguous stratum, and becomes the electricity of this face. 

 It is the same with the opposite coating. It is then by the In the dis» 



mutual decomposition of the natural electrical state, to ^}^^S^ ^^® 



,. , , . 1111 • ^electriciiyfroin 



which the two coatmgs are reduced by the transportation of each si'i is 



their precedine; electricities to the faces of the insulating" "■''"^f ^ed »a 



,11-, 1 o ~ P^fi to the 



plate, that the discharge is made: to lorm these two new other, andthus 

 electricities, which become quiescent, and are necessary to ''^"'^-"■* " <iuv" 

 place in the same state all the other electricities of the insu- 

 lating stratum ; these two electricities of opposite kinds, 

 which each of the two coatings acquires at the expense of 

 the natural state of the other ; is the end of that transport- 

 ation of the fluid, which occasions the shock ; and not to 

 Vol. XXL— Dec. 1808. U destroy 



