/mail Quantities of Electricity, i ^ 
At laft, after a great variety of experiments, which it is 
unneceifary to defcribe, I became fully convinced, that thofe 
plates did always retain a fmall quantity of electricity, perhaps 
of that fort with which they had been laft electrified, and 
of which it was almoft impoffible to deprive them. The va- 
rious quality of the electricity produced was owing to this, 
viz, that as one of thofe plates was poflefled of a fmall quan- 
tity of pofitive eleCtricity, and another was poflefled of the 
negative eleCtricity, that plate which happened to be the moft 
powerful, occafioned a contrary eleCtricity in the other plate, 
and finally produced an accumulation of that particular fort of 
eleCtricity. 
Thofe obfervations evidently {hew, that no precife refult 
can be obtained from the ufe of thofe plates, and of courfe 
that, when conftruCted according to the original plan, they are 
{till more equivocal, becaufe they admit of more fources of 
miftake. 
As thofe plates, after doubling or multiplying only four or 
five times, {hew no figns of eleCtricity, none having been 
communicated to them before, 1 imagined that they might 
be ufeful fo far only, viz, that when a fmall quantity of 
cleCtricitv is communicated to any of them in the courie 
of lome experiment, one might multiply it with fafety 
four or five times, which would even be of advantage in va- 
rious cafes; but in this alfo my expectations were difappointed, 
as will appear from the following pages. 
Having obferved, after many experiments, that, ceteris pari - 
bus, when I began to multiply from a certain plate, for in- 
ftance A, the eleCtricity which refulted was generally pofitive; 
and when I began with another plate B, viz. confidered this 
plate B as the firft plate, the refulting eleCtricity was generally 
negative ; 
