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XLI.I. On Magneto-electric Induction; in a Letter to M. 

 Gay-Lussac. By Michael Faraday, D.C.L., F.R.S.* 



My dear Sir, 



I BEG to address to you the following pages upon the sub- 

 ject of electro-magnetism, and request the favour of their 

 insertion in the Annates de Chimie et de Physique. They may, 

 I fear, provoke a controversy that I would willingly avoid ; 

 but under the existing circumstances I feel compelled to 

 adopt the present course of proceeding, for silence, should I 

 maintain it, would be regarded as an admission of error, not 

 only in a philosophical, but also in a moral point of view, 

 from which I believe myself wholly exempt. 



You will undoubtedly understand that I allude to the Me- 

 moir by Messrs. Nobili and Antinori. I address myself to 

 you, because your judgement was sufficiently favourable to 

 my former memoir for it to obtain a place in your excellent 

 and truly philosophical Journal ; and because Messrs. Nobili 

 and Antinori's memoir being also inserted, the Annates con- 

 tain all that has been written upon the subject. I therefore 

 venture to hope that you will not refuse to admit the present 

 article. 



On the 24th of November, 1831, my first memoir, which 

 you did me the honour to insert in the Annates for the month 

 of May, 1832 (p. 5—69.), was read before the Royal Society ; 

 and it was the first announcement that I made of my re- 

 searches in electricity. 



On the 18th of December, 1831, I addressed a letter to my 

 friend M. Hachette, which he was pleased to communicate to 

 the Academy of Sciences on the 26th of the same month f. 



[* Translated from the Annates de Chimie et de Physique, vol. li. p. 404. 

 Mr. Faraday, in the preface to his collected "Experimental Researches in 

 Electricity," published last year, and reviewed in L. and E. Phil. Mag,, 

 vol.xiv. p. 468, refers to several papers of his own, long since published,in the 

 following terms. " Before concluding these lines I would beg leave to make 

 " a reference or two ; first, to my own papers on Electro-magnetic Rota- 

 " tions in the Quarterly Journal of Science, 1822, xii. 74. 186. 283. 416., 

 " and also to my Letter on Magneto-electric Induction in the Annates de 

 " Chimie, li. p. 404. These might, as to the matter, very properly have 

 " appeared in this volume, but they would have interfered with it as a 

 " simple reprint of the ' Experimental Researches' of the Philosophical 

 " Transactions." As the papers here alluded to are now scarce, and as 

 one of them has appeared in the French language only, we propose to 

 transfer them in succession to our pages, in order that the purchasers of 

 Mr. Faraday's volume may be enabled to possess, in a small compass, the 

 entire series of his researches in electricity and magnetism. We begin 

 with the letter on Magneto-electric induction, addressed to M. Gay- 

 Lussac. — Edit.] -f- Vide the Lycee, No. 35. 



