134 
ELECTRICAL FACTS. 
Electric signs. 
Excitation ; 
Elect.charges. 
simple electi i- 
city. 
VIII. 
On the Conducting Power of Bodies for Electricity, and the 
Effect of Points. By R. B. 
To Mr. Nicholson . 
SIR, 
T HE importance of electrical knowledge m chemistry, 
makes it desirable that philosophers should direct their 
attention to the general effects of this once very fashionable, and 
still surprizing department of experimental knowledge. This 
will, I am confident, obtain your admission for the following, 
and perhaps other, communications, I may hereafter send you. 
It remains still undecided, whether the electric signs be 
caused by one single fluid, or by two fluids ; whether the lumi- 
nous appearances be produced by the electric matter rendered 
visible, or by a deflagration or combustion of the conductors, or 
of one of the elements of the air during its course, or by 
change of its density by mere impulse; whether bodies have 
any attraction for this luminous matter, which flies to them, 
or whether they retain it merely by virtue of the surrounding 
air, and readily give it out in a vacuum ; whether there be any 
repulsion between the particles of electricity, since the luminous 
stream in vacuo does not . diverge, and its distribution in con- 
ductors as in the electric well, follows another law than would 
arise from repulsion ? and while these and other very important 
doubts remain ; what theory can be adopted, or what peculiar 
nomenclature can be made use of, which will not, by favouring 
some undecided point, lead us into error ? 
The order in which electrical phenomena are produced, is not 
the most eligible to consider them in. Excitation, which is 
the first operation the electrician performs, is the most abstruse 
and surprizing of all the appearances ; and it requires a most 
intimate acquaintance with the electrification of simple con- 
ductors, and the nature of electric charges, before any conjecture 
can 
