678 
TERRESTRIAL GALVANISM. 
power which he employed. I bad in some 
degree anticipated his dtout by hazarding 
in the last edition of rny ‘ Million of Facts,’ 
1835, an assertion that, inasmuch as metals 
are found in only a mixed or confused state 
in different rocks, among which a galvanic 
action on air or water would necessarily 
arise, long time would generate the com- 
pound matrices of metals ; but 1 did not 
regard this public anticipation as any infer- 
ence with his original merits, and I was 
deeply penetrated by the view of his labours, 
and the expense and zeal with which he had 
prosecuted his experiments. Yet he had a 
round conductor for a minimum of power, 
instead of a combination of flat or parallel 
ones for a maximum. And he could not 
help talking about the fluid, and some other 
fancies of the elder electricians, who invent- 
ed their doctrines before it was suspected, 
that air was a compound, and that such 
active powers as oxygen, nitrogen, hydro- 
gen, and their definite numerical co-mix- 
tures, conferred mechanical character on 
the most refined operations of nature. 
He instructed me in the fact that his 
batteries performed four times the duty in 
those hours in the morning, from 7 to 11, 
when the great laboratory of nature is evolv- 
ing the most oxygen, than in the same pe- 
riod in the evening, when we may imagine 
the contrary effect takes place. He consi- 
dered the air as so non-electric in damp 
weather, that no plate of air, lying between 
the coating of a cloud and the earth, could 
then be disturbed, and he stated to me as 
a general fact that the earth is always posi- 
tively electrified. 
“ On my part I enlarged to him and his 
son on the universality of matter and mo- 
tion in producing all material phenomena, 
independently of the whimsical powers in- 
vented in ages when he would have been 
burnt for a magician, and in this way I 
endeavoured to return the various informa- 
tion which he had so unreservedly imparted 
to me. I impressed on him that all this 
creative energy of atom was merely a dis- 
play of developments by the great motions 
of the earth as they affect the excitable parts 
of different solid bodies ; the results of 
which are necessarily regular, and their 
ultimate laws of re-action and combination 
also regular, so as to produce that universal 
harmony which surprizes beings who, in 
eternal time, live and observe within only a 
unit of time. Hence that terrestrial galva- 
nism arising from the operations of the in- 
ternal frictions and varied pressures called 
heat ; hence those factious productions of 
metallic matrices and crystalline forms 
resulting from refined and subtle actions 
which confer electrical and galvanic effects, 
where diff erent substances are proximately 
opposed ; hence magnetism itself tangentally 
displayed as a resultant of terrestrial cur- 
rents of electricity : hence the fluctuations 
of the phenomena from obliquity of the 
axis of rotation which, in regard to the axis 
of the orbit, generates two variable direc- 
tions of massive pressure ; hence, in fine, 
the wisdom displayed by Mr. Crosse in 
resorting to the modus oi^erandi of nature 
in his attempts to imitate her most curi- 
ous productions. 
“ Observing that continual fresh arrivals 
rendered it ineligible for me to prolong my 
visit, I proceeded to Taunton, a distance of 
six or seven miles, the nearest place at 
which a stranger can meet with public 
accommodation.” — Lancet, Oct. 1836. 
PUBLIC MEETING AT THE TOWN 
HALL. 
Saturdnj/, lltti March, 1837, 
The Venerable Archdeacon Dealtry wag 
called to the chair. 
On the opening of the ^proceedings the 
chairman observed that it would have been 
as well in the first instance to have submit- 
ted the proposition for the establishment of 
Mr. Brett’s Hospital to the District Charita- 
ble Committee and to have solicited its sup- 
port, which no doubt would have been granted 
on the great utility of the Hospital being fully 
proved to that committee. He was himself 
ready to give it his most strenuous support. 
Mr. Drummond observed that a committee 
had been sitting for sometime past for the 
purpose of establishing a fever hospital, for 
which public contributions had been obtained 
as well as the co-operation of the Government, 
and he thought the proposition for establish, 
ing another hospital premature and likely 
to interfere with the one projected. He 
had the sentiments of Lord Auckland on 
the subject, which he would read to the 
meeting. (Here Mr. Drummond read the 
following letter from his Lordship.) 
“ I will not head a subscription, as seems 
to be desired, for a General Hospital, though 
