THE 



CALCUTTA JOURNAL 



OF 



NATURAL HISTORY. 



Faraday's Experimental Researches in Electricity. 

 First and Second Series.* 



The marked analogies that subsist between the leading 

 phenomena of Electricity and Magnetism, early suggested 

 the idea of these two powers being intimately connected, and 

 led to many oft-repeated and varied, though long fruitless, 

 efforts to detect the nature and relations of this connection. 

 Numerous distinguished names occur in the records of these 

 unsuccessful attempts, and it is sufficiently remarkable that 

 at least in one instance, that of the celebrated Beccarria, the 

 very verge of that brilliant discovery, on which has been 

 reared the new science of Electro-magnetism, was unconsci- 

 ously attained. During the progress of his researches, un- 

 dertaken with the specific intention of investigating the re- 

 lations of electricity to magnetism, Beccarria observed, that 

 a needle through which he had transmitted an electric shock, 



* We are indebted to Lieut. R. Baird Smith, of the Bengal Engineers, 

 for this interesting analysis of the three first Series of Faraday's Ex- 

 perimental Researches, as we have been to the same accomplished 

 officer for former papers, also on Electricity, which excited consider- 

 able interest at the time they were published.— Ed. 



VOL. III. NO. IX. APRIL 1842. B 



