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Faraday s Experimental Researches in Electricity. By 

 Lieut. R. B. Smith, Bengal Engineers. 



[Third and Fourth Series.] 



From the very commencement of his Researches, Fara- 

 day appears to have formed the most comprehensive idea of 

 the conclusions to which they were destined to conduct him, 

 and it is evident from many internal evidences, that the 

 ground-plan (so to speak) of his labours, was apprehended 

 by him in so clear and distinct a manner, that from the first, 

 his mind refused to be satisfied with leaving even the slight- 

 est obstacle that would interfere with the perfect symmetry 

 of the structure he contemplated raising, unremoved. 



In accordance with this state of feeling, he undertakes 

 the laborious train of research, detailed in his third series, 

 to satisfy himself of the identity of electricities derived from 

 different sources, since, to employ his own words, the pro- 

 gress of the electrical researches he had the honour to pre- 

 sent to the Royal Society, had brought him to a point, at 

 which it was essential for the farther prosecution of his in- 

 quiries that no doubt should remain as to the identity, or 

 distinction of electricities excited by different means. Nor 

 was this a step of minor importance, for although an im- 

 pression favourable to such identity certainly did exist in 

 the mind of the generality of scientific men, it was vague 

 and indistinct, and had no sound claim to admission among 

 established scientific truths ; doubts of different kinds and 

 in different degrees being over the question, and even up to 

 the date of the publication of Faraday's third series, and 

 in the number of the Philosophical Transactions immedi- 

 ately preceding that in which it was published, efforts had 

 been made by distinguished electricians to establish dis- 

 tinctions between electricities derived from different sources. 

 To have left the question undecided would therefore have 



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