214 
THE BORDERLAND OF CHEMISTRY AND ELECTRICITY. 
told that jerky, excitable people have more electrical affinities in them 
than those who are very slow and plodding. I have noticed this in 
subjects receiving electric shocks from a coil. 
More than one witness of the following curious phenomena has 
vouched for their accuracy. Certain men during the severe winters 
in various parts of Canada and North America have demonstrated for 
the amusement of their friends the fact of being able to light a gas- 
jet with their fingers without any electrical appliance; it was in each 
case done before friends who had a knowledge of electricity. The 
towns in which I am told they took place were on high plateaus. In 
one case the experimentalist simply slid across a well waxed floor in 
his slippers; arriving at the end of the room near the gas-jet turned 
on, and immediately placing his finger above the jet, to the astonish¬ 
ment of the witnesses the gas was lighted. I confess that even in 
this last case I cannot understand the phenomenon, for although it is 
a common experiment to light a gas-jet by allowing your body to be¬ 
come charged from either a coil or frictional machine, still your body 
has to be insulated in that case on a glass stool; where the electricity 
comes in when you are not insulated is a matter of considerable doubt. 
In the face of the evidence I had given to me it was almost impossible 
not to believe, but in the face of the fact of the Electric Eel it may be 
possible surrounding conditions being favourable, for a human 
being to become charged with electricity. It is undoubtedly a fact 
that some people’s hair when combed with a vulcanite comb produces 
sparks in the dark ; and of course a cat, having a very dry skin, when 
rubbed violently in a dark room even with the hand exhibits the same 
electric condition. From this knowledge a cat skin is very often used 
as an exciting medium for frictional electricity; in any case, if human 
subjects have exhibited electrical phenomena, then their skins must 
be abnormally thick and dry. 
Starch granules produced in vegetables or plants are of course 
regenerations of the carbon in the ground in which they are growing. 
Artificially you can turn these granules into sugar, and by still further 
action, as I have just shown, that sugar again becomes carbon. 
Beginning with heat you end with heat, for to drive the dynamo 
you start its motion by means of the furnace of the engine necessary 
to produce motive power, and you end with heat in the so-called electric 
light. Co-existing with this you start with chemical action and you 
end with chemical action, the heat and light of the chemical action 
being turned into electricity, the vibration communicates its action 
to the molecules of the metal wires necessary to convey the current 
to the carbons of the electric lamp. In my lectures, at Dover and Shoe- 
buryness, in 1896, I mentioned a common experiment with electrodes 
in acidulated water; to use a current of such an E.M.F. that short 
circuit between electrodes takes place. One then sees a vibrating line 
of electric molecules develope heat and light in the liquid. 
Chemical action is in itself a vibration, heat is vibration, light 
is vibration, electricity is vibration, sound is vibration—the telephone 
converting it into electricity, which is conveyed by wires to another 
