1832.] Progress of European Science. 367 



VII. — Progress of European Science. 

 Electricity. 



Our journal has hitherto adverted but little to the subject of European 

 science. Our space has been too fully occupied to admit of copious extracts 

 from the scientific periodicals of England, and of the continent ; we have 

 confined ourselves to the reprinting of such notices in natural history, 

 as were immediately connected with India. There is consequently a large 

 arrear to bring up in other branches of science, and we must seek the 

 means of doing so rather in the shape of a general review, than of broken 

 and detached extracts. Fortunately, the materials for such a review are 

 for the most part prepared to our hands, in the papers and essays read at 

 the Academie, the Royal Society, and the Royal Institution ; and in the 

 annual addresses of the Presidents ©f other scientific bodies. It is a com- 

 mendable rule of the French academy, that all works and papers presented, 

 instead of being read at random and at length, are first referred to a com- 

 mission, whose report generally condenses the original matter into a short 

 and lucid abstract, much fitter for perusal before a mixed audience, or by 

 the general class of readers. It is from such sources that we propose to 

 gather our information. 



Electricity is one of those invisible agents of nature, to the develop- 

 ment of the effects of which attention is at this moment powerfully direct- 

 ed, on account of the discovery of several new phenomena, partly by 

 accident, but chiefly by well-conducted experimental investigation. 

 We shall endeavour to lay before our readers the progress that has been 

 made, in these researches, under two heads : — 1st, as connected with 

 chemistry ; — and 2nd, as connected with magnetism. The time seems near 

 at hand, when the principle which actuates the triune sciences of galvanism, 

 magnetism, and chemistry, will be acknowledged to be one only, under the 

 name of vis electrica, subject to as simple and invariable laws as those of the 

 gravitating principle, although like the latter its actual nature may ever re- 

 main a mystery to our limited comprehension. 



1. — Electro- Chemistry. 



If anything proves how far we are from a right understanding of the theory of 

 the development of electricity in the voltaic pile, it is the diversity of opinions 

 among philosophers who have especially engaged upon this inquiry. 



Volta conceived that the simple contact of two solid conductors, such as the 

 two metals, zinc and copper, produced electricity ; and he thought that the 

 liquids interposed hetvveen the couplets of the pile served only to transmit the 

 electricity of one to the next. 



An observation made in France, by Messrs. Biot and Fred. Cuvier, proved the 

 influence of atmospheric oxigen in the charge of the pile ; for having placed it in 

 a receiver full of air, resting upon water, the action of the pile went on dimi- 

 nishing as the oxigen of the air became fixed on the zinc, and finally stopped 

 when nothing but azote was left in the receiver. 



Wollaston sought to prove, that the electricity of the pile proceeded from the 

 chemical action of the liquid, interposed between the couplets, on the metals of 

 the latter. 



Davy, while admitting the principle of Volta, regarding the development of 

 electricity by contact, recognized the necessity of a chemical action between the 

 liquids and the metals which formed the pile, to produce a charge. 



2 A 



