*04 BLECTRICAL EFFECTS PRODUCED BT FRICTION. 



under some theory, as tending io advance our intellectual im- 

 provement ; and he will now judge whether I have accom- 

 plished this purpose. 

 Supposed ob- IS The last part of his paper willlead us to another field, 

 rerSTo "the ^^^^^ ^^ ^^^^ -""^'^^ obscurity, but on which I think light will 

 action of the appear. This part relates to what he calls the galvanic lattery, 

 galvanic saying : '* that all the opinions, which have been proposed to 



*' account for it, are unavoidably hypothetical, and indeed very 

 '•' unsatisfactory ; and that, therefore, every fact, which relates 

 " to it, deserves attention, although its application may not be 

 " clearly perceived." This gives me hope that he will con- 

 sider what I shall here explain j expressing, however, again 

 my regret, that he has not known my paper in your Journal on 

 the galvanic pile, an apparatus in which the causes and effects 

 may be easily followed ; but I hope to make them clear, even 

 in the apparatus of troughs, the only one Dr. Maycock seems 

 to have used. I therefore shall copy first what he says of his 

 experiments. 

 Dr. Maycock's " I filled one of the new porcelain troughs with an acidfuid, 

 experiments k g^ ^^^^ ^j^g metallic plates, and their connecting arcs, were 

 " completely covered. In this slate, a trough of 10 pairs of 

 " plates, 3 inches square, decomposed water very rapidly. 

 " Anxious to know bow far the division of the trough into 

 " cells is requisite, I placed the metals, connected by the lar, 

 " in a trough without partitions, and filled it with the same 

 " kind of acid, — but no action ensued. The action which 

 *' took place in the first experiment appears inconsistent with 

 '^ all our //ieoHM ; and it seems not a little curious, since a 

 " communication between the cells is not an impediment to 

 " action, that no action was evinced in the second experiment. 

 " It would afford me much pleasure, should these observations 

 *' call the attention of your readers to the theory of electrical 

 " excitement." It has certainly been the case with me, and I 

 shall now explain how I find bis experiments consistent with 

 each other, and also with my theory. 

 Attempt to 19, In the first of these experiments, the trough with parti- 



explaintheap- ^^^^^ produced a series of ten distinct pairs of the two metals, 

 parent incoD' * _ ^ ' 



sistency in which, being formed of plates 3 inches square, were sufficient 

 them. tQ produce the effect described j as the liquid was a conductor, 



which transmitted undisturbed the effect of each pair to the 



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