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tion; which latent elements cannot be excited to sufficient intensity of action, to yield fire, unless assisted by the influence of oxygen gas.

Again, this very peculiar principle of animated nature, and of fire, would not have been mentioned here, had it not, also, been subservient to the purposes of the Creator in the production of water, of which it is a main constituent, as before noticed; and to its instrumentality in this respect, as we shall have further to allude, all conducive to our object, as far as we have already gone, having been signified, we desire merely to recapitulate, that we are indebted to this invisible substance, first of all, for the power to breathe, and, in the next place, for its being the means of contributing two, in themselves, of the most hostile parts of nature, yet both indispensable auxiliaries to life, namely, fire and water!

Besides these, its peculiar properties, this gas has qualities, also, common to every other ethereal fluid, such, for instance, as the power of expansion and compression. It enters, moreover, with them, into the composition of most substances in nature; and, though in itself so volatile and subtle an essence, it contributes, as a medium of condensation and cement, to give magnitude and solidity, to, perhaps, every thing we behold in the visible creation-whether animal, vegetable, or mineral!

This very powerful ethereal spirit, though contained in all substances, was wholly unknown to have existence until 1774, when the experiments of the philosophical Dr. Priestley, of Birmingham, detected it; and who, from discovering also its peculiar quality of supplying the principle of ani. mal life, gave it the name of vital air. Every philosophical treatise on the constitution of the earth's atmosphere, or the composition of water, written previously to the discovery of this principal element of both air and water, must therefore necessarily be defective. To have given, as we went on, an account of the analytical experiments by which the facts brought forward in this description of oxygen gas were authenticated, would have rendered an article of this kind tedious, without adequate benefit; experiments, for the most part, requiring to be seen, to be understood.

Concerning the other gas before-named, derived from the essential and very subtle substance called hydrogen, because it has the peculiar property of communicating to water its quality of fluidity, it has long been known as that invisible matter termed

inflammable air. Persons employed in subterraneous occupations, are too well acquainted with its terrific character, from the explosions which, in coal and other deep mines, are occasionally causing such destructive consequences as we hear of; and miners have given it the very expressive name of fire-damp. Most people are now, also, acquainted with it, from the attention it has attracted of late years by being em. ployed as a substitute for oil-lamps in lighting streets, shops, taverns, &c.—It is, also, pretty generally known to be that same gas employed for filling balloons, being, as it is, one of the lightest substances in nature; thirteen gallons of which, when pure, not being heavier than one gallon of common air. Hence, when collected and conveyed in a large quantity into the body of a balloon, it has the quality of pressing upwards equal to thirteen times the resistance of the atmosphere, through which it is consequently capable of ascending, and of carrying very great weights to a wonderful altitude.

Although we see it burning with such brilliancy, as it issues from the lamp-pipe, and although it might justly receive its characteristic title, inflammable air, yet actually, within itself, it has not the quality of burning, being indebted to the oxygen gas existing in the atmospheric air, for the power to become what we call fire. In. deed, so far from being able to ignite in itself, if a lighted candle be introduced into a body of this gas in a confined vessel, instead of causing the explosion of the gas, as might be supposed, the candle is instantly extinguished; yet, in a confined apartment, where an accumulation of hydrogen gas had taken place, by a candle being introduced into the room, the explosion would be terrific.

The human body, as well as all other animal bodies, contains a great portion of hydrogen in its composition: and all vegetables, likewise, are indebted to this elementary substance for a considerable quantity of their component material. Indeed, we may also look upon it as being, in union with oxygen, the great cementing principle of the most solid and dense bodies in nature. That it exists copiously in metallic substances, may be inferred from its being derived very abundantly and purely by the decomposition of iron by sulphuric acid it is generated profusely, also, by the action of solar heat on peat-lands, and boggy tracts of country. Although constantly escaping from the earth in every direction, yet it never mingles with the atmospheric air: it will

enter into composition with either oxygen gas, or nitrogen gas, separately: but when they become commingled, as in the atmosphere, they refuse to admit a particle of hydrogen to incorporate with them. Hence, therefore, from its extraordinary volatility, it is supposed to ascend, as it escapes from the earth, into the higher regions of the air, where it subsides in elevated tracts of rarefied ether, equal in levity to itself, accumulating, probably, for some dispensation in the destiny of the world.

Having thus given an account of the separate properties, and characteristic peculiarities, of each of the two elementary ingredients which constitute water, we now proceed to explain the means employed by nature in order to effect the very interesting process of compounding her prepared atoms of primitive matter.-These said gases being each conceived to be solid particles of matter in the highest possible state of refinement, are not to be supposed to have any power or tendency to flow together of themselves, and to produce another substance totally different in its nature and properties to either. Matter has no power to act, but is susceptible of certain influences by which it is acted upon; and this property is universal in all sorts of matter, whether it be elementary particles, or compound masses. Thus has the AUTHOR AND RULER OF reserved to himself the power of establishing agencies and instrumentalities, by means of which the whole system of organization and decomposition is being carried on throughout the material universe.

NATURE

Seeing, then, that oxygen gas could have no innate tendency to unite with hydrogen gas, nor hydrogen any inclination to mingle with oxygen,-seeing, also, that the exact proportions of each must be, on all occasions, maintained, in order to produce the result ordained by divine appointment, to what wonderful agency or instrumentality are we to ascribe the effect, of their each contributing its precise quantity, so as, out of their respective dry, solid, impenetrable atoms, to produce the phenomenon of water? Can it be by the action and agency of fire? It has been shown that fire is not a substance, and that it can be produced only under certain restrictions; yet it is, nevertheless, one of the most active and universal agents in nature, not only for reducing substances into their elementary particles, but also for converting and compounding material elements into bodies: and actual combustion is the means of interflux of the two ethereal essences, oxygen gas and hydrogen gas, in the precise relative propor2D. SERIES, NO. 21.--VOL. II.

tions that convert them into water,-it is thus that every drop of water ever produced in the world has been generated!

Staggering as this fact may seem, it is fully proved by the analysis of water, which, come from whatever part of the earth it may, sea or river, rain or spring, exhibits the same invariable proportion of each gas; that is, eighty-five parts of oxygen gas, and fifteen parts of hydrogen gas.

In consequence of the difference of quality which almost every water possessesfrom the saline quality of the sea, contrasted with the freshness of the river; and the hardness, as we say, of some spring waters, compared with the softness of rains,-at a hasty view, the accuracy of the fact alleged might be disputed : but these seeming contradictions will immediately disappear after a little consideration. The quality of the same water, we know, can be changed, by throwing a little salt into one vessel; and into another, containing a portion of the same water, a little sugar, soda, &c.: but the salt, sugar, or soda, can be again extracted by means of distillation, and the water in each be restored to its original purity. In like manner, water containing any mineral substance, how strongly soever it may be impregnated, can, by evaporation, be so completely separated, as to become pure water: and it is this distilled water which, reduced to its native elements, will always exhibit those elements in the relative quantities which have been stated.

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In the experiments from which the truths we have here taught are deduced, there are some results that are very interesting and convincing.-Suppose oxygen and hydrogen gases to be each introduced into a close glass vessel in the proportions before stated, through some part of which vessel a brass wire has been inserted, and made air-tight, if an electrical spark be conducted by the wire to the gases, combustion will take place, and they will be deposited in the shape of water, which water will be precisely equal in weight to that of the gases before they were burnt. Again, this same water may be resolved by analysis into the two gases, which will retain each of their original proportions, without any loss of weight: and these experiments may be alternately repeated for several times, without either of the gases being reduced by the action of combustion,that is to say, neither of them will have been burnt away in the least degree by the performance of the experiment many times over!

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The relation of these particulars leads to the mention of one more phenomenon, by way of conclusion. When hydrogen gas has been evolved from the earth in very large quantities, it sometimes chances, in its progress upwards, to meet with partial obstructions from very dense collections of floating exhalations in the mid air. When thus intercepted, and a voluminous body of it has been accumulated under a mass of such heterogeneous exhalations as salts, bitumen, sulphur, metals, and almost every thing else to which a name can be given, while thus pent under the impeding mineral cloud, electric emotions between differently charged volumes are taking place, and sundry influences are acting upon each in different directions: thus we see great agitation among the condensing elements; some clouds being drawn one way, and some in an opposite direction, until, at length, a great degree of violence is excited; they become convulsed, and the electrical fire begins to fly and dart about. What then are we to expect! Has there not been a body of highly combustible matter composed beneath, and entangled with the mass of exhalations of all descriptions, within the oxygenated atmosphere, and are we not to expect its explosion amid the flashing fires? Confined as it had been among all mineral commixtures, must we not expect, from the simultaneous conflagration, all the floating particles of earths and metals within its reach to become molten and vitrified? Must we not look, from such a cause, for the precipitation of meteoric masses to the earth: and do we not see, also, the engendering, out of the combustion of the oxygen and hydrogen gases thus met, vast quantities of water, and the pouring down of it in tremendous showers, amid peals of thunder? Do we not see, indeed, amid all this distraction of the elements, a rational and satisfactory solution of the phenomena of a thunder-storm, and of all its accompanying meteoric prodigies?

Now, as improvement ought to be derived from every page we read, let us endeavour to find out to what intellectual account we can turn such excursions in science as the one we have just taken.Seneca, merely a pagan philosopher, says, "The mind, seeing that it hath really arrived upwards at infinitude, is cheered and enlarged; and, freed, as it were, from fetters, it regains its native sphere. It scrutinizes the magnificent works it beholds, and ponders! What further does it seek? It perceives that these things appertain to its own derivation-here, in the

end, it learns what for a long time it had sought,-here it first begins to discern a God."*

If paganism could dictate such sentiments as these, what are the impressions which Christianity ought to impart, upon a survey of such works of wonder as those we have just been contemplating? Thousands of half-fervent and doubting sort of Christians may never before have supposed that there was any thing in the production of water to cause surprise; and on reading the facts here related, may exclaim, who could have thought it ?-Such questions as these are within the reach of almost every capacity; and there is no difficulty in making up the mind to believe on reading and examining them yet they cannot be believed without being examined, and the mind on examination being captivated by truth.

Yet it is possible that those who are ignorant of these physical truths, may have pretended to sift and and question the truths of divine revelation.-Thus, by the discovery of our deficiency in knowledge concerning what is going on before our eyes, it is, that we gain an "understanding, the merchandise of which," as Solomon assures us, "is better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than of fine gold."-Having found out how far the wisdom of an Eternal and Infinite Being has surpassed all human comprehension in the economy of "earthly things," we become diciplined to such a proper diffidence, as to yield implicit obedience to the evidences with which we have been favoured, concerning "heavenly things," -we behold his Almightiness in the secondary revelations of nature, and surrender to the evangelical testimonies of his gospel-we contemplate the wonders of creation with which we are surrounded, till, lost in transport, we exclaim with the son of Sirach, "There are yet hid greater things than these, for we have seen but few of his works."

THEORY OF ELECTRICITY, OF ELECTROGALVANISM, AND OF ELECTRO- MAGNETISM.

MR. EDITOR,

SIR,-So much attention has, for the last twenty years, been bestowed on ElectroGalvanism and Electro-Magnetism, that philosophers have almost forgotten many other of those physical subjects which engaged the attention of our forefathers. But,

*Naturales Questiones, 1. i.

in spite of the popularity of these novelties, the mysterious way in which new facts have been enshrined by old theories, have rendered it so difficult for sober inquirers to follow them, that some disentanglement of false theory becomes necessary to render the novelties intelligible,-I have, therefore, renewed my correspondence with you, and, on this subject, submit to your readers a theory of the whole, which I have no doubt, if adopted, will facilitate much further discovery.

It is now five-and-forty years since I pursued, with youthful ardour, a science veiled by hereditary superstitions in many hidden mysteries. I burst their bonds, and, conforming my machine to the natural principle of spherical action, I operated with extended surfaces of conductors; and, in 1788, formed an arrangement of them, exactly resembling, in outline, Mr. Children's great Voltaic Battery, literally charging cells and plates of air. The results were transcendent, and gratifying as a spectacle ; but they effected far more, they enabled me to understand the true nature of electrical action.

In the following sketch, brevity renders fulness of explanation, and excursive topics, impracticable; but electricians, and singleminded searchers after TRUTH, will supply various details on which I could not enter. I am, &c. &c.

R. PHILLIPS.

1. THAT electricity, in whatever way excited, is a display of the actions and re-actions of the atomic elements of nature, in the production of many sensible phenomena, which elements are traced by their effects, and have been agreed to be called by the names of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, &c.

2. That in all definite compounds, these elements dispose themselves in regular arrangements, proportions, and conditions; quiescent and fixed in solids; partly fixed and partly mobile in liquids; and mobile in gaseous fluids as their expansion and fluidity; while disturbances in these regular atomic arrangements, and the force and circumstances of restoration, generate the reactions and phenomena which we call

electrical.

3. That central motion, or weight, is a measure of the number of atoms within given dimensions, just as the atoms are fixed or partly fixed, as in solids or liquids; but it is no measure of their number when the atoms, as in liquids and gases, have lateral motions, oblique or right-angle to

the direction of the motion called gravity. Hence it may be inferred, that every space is essentially full of fixed or mobile atoms; that every equal space has equal power within it; that disturbance, or inequality, in any space, is reacted upon by the force of all adjoining space; and that all space is a plenum of equal power, in relatively fixed atoms, or in atoms performing regular motions or orbits.

4. That solids are converted into liquids and gases, by imparting to them the motions or momenta, which previously existed in some other liquids or gases, which on their part become less liquid, or less gaseous, or even solid, in their turn; and that this transfer of motion from one species of body to another is what is called HEAT; while this theory of heat, as matter of fact, applies to every known form and display of heat, and to all the changes and phenomena of which this mode of atomic action is susceptible.

5. That the transfer of heat is a general abstraction of the momenta of the various atoms in a fluid or gaseous mass; but when it happens that any species of atoms are fixed, and not the others in the same volume, then the constitution and equilibrium of the volume is disturbed, and a series of phenomena arise, which we call ELECTRICAL. Heat, therefore, generally speaking, is equal acquisition, or transfer of motion, from, or to, a volume of atoms; and electricity is the partial acquisition, or transfer of motion, in regard to particular atoms of the volume, as those of oxygen, hydrogen, &c.

6. That as far as our experiments have extended, (under erroneous theories which have mystified and embarrassed all inquiry,) it appears that the particular disturbance which creates electrical action is oxydation, or accumulation of oxygen atoms, at one side of a previously quiescent volume. It is thus in the oxydation of the amalgam on our electrical rubber, and of the zinc in a galvanic arrangement. In one, the rubber and its connected bodies are de-oxydated, or oxygen accumulated on the excited side by its flow, to the parts; and in the other, the oxygen is rapidly fixed on the zinc surface, from the adjoining acidulous fluid.

7. That in speaking of electricity as negative and positive, it is the description of the effects of one action on two or more elements, as it affects electrics, which it penetrates in right lines or radii with varied freedom; and as conductors which oppose its penetration, thereby concentrating it on their surfaces, and moving it laterally on the surface. We generate electricity by some accumulation of oxygen; and when

we do this, it is in proximity with some electric which propagates the disturbance through its mass, and through the masses of all adjacent electrics; as, through glass, air, &c. &c.

8. That we rub an electric with another electric, and then the susceptibility of oxygen to motion occasions oxygen accumulation on the surface of the electric body, in which, so to speak, the oxygen has more affinity with the motion than the body. This oxygen creates a corresponding as semblage on the rubber, of hydrogen, which, separating from its oxygen, renders both electrical in opposite states, on their two sides. When separated, each affects in a similar manner the adjoining electric of air, and begets in the air (owing to its extent) an electrical atmosphere, which, in juxtaposition, is contrary to the excited electric on both its sides; but the expansion diminishing the force, a limit arises, generating a distant surface in a contrary state, less or more distant as the space is or is not bounded by surfaces of non-electrics, obstructors, or what are called "con. ductors." This is disturbance, or excitement; and restoration consists in re-uniting the equally disturbed atmospheres, by join. ing their centres, by which they suddenly collapse, and present to the senses, in the centre, electric flame and action.

9. That in the previous description of the mode by which the electrified sphere is generated, we are borne out by the facts. In oxydating by rubbing a cushion and glass, we abstract the oxygen from the cushion and bodies adjoining it, and transfer it to the glass. If the cushion is connected by a chain to the ground, or with an insulated conductor in its rear, we see sparks proceed to it, indicating that an exhaustion and restoration is passing between the cushion and the parts behind it, so that a flow of oxygen takes place as far as possible from the aerial hemisphere behind the cushion, and that hemisphere becomes in a positive state, tending every where to transmit sparks to the cushion, and displaying at a distance points with a brush, and on the cushion a point with a star. The glass on the other hand becomes positive, and the air and all bodies opposed to it negative, the sparks proceeding in the opposite direction, the needles between the conductor and glass being stars, or receiving, and the flow being from positive, or oxygen in the glass, with a brush, to negative, or hydrogen, in the whole hemisphere on that side, acting in radii through the air and electrics, and laterally on obstructors, or non-affected bodies, called "conductors."

10. That all the phenomena of an electrical machine are, therefore, as matter of fact, the actions and re-actions of two opposite hemispheres in contrary states. The prime conductor is merely an extension of the cylinder, facilitated by the points directed to it, and seeking to expand the principle of oxygen to meet the principle of hydrogen, or the return of it to the cushion. The limit of the power is the distance of the points from the cushion, and the maximum force is in the line joining the centre. The poles are the rubber and the cylinder, or the points of the conductors; and if these are joined, the spheres collapse, generating at the common centre the effect called electricity, which effect is the sudden condensation of disturbed spheres, or hemispheres, of oxygen and hydrogen, producing light, atomic energy, force, &c. &c., in the centre. What is miscalled, "electric fluid, fire,” &c. is therefore, in EVERY CASE, the condensation of spheres of separated oxygen and hydrogen, acting in hemispheres around their centres, and collapsing on any reunion of their centres ; and no fluid, as it is oddly called, no fire, flame, &c., take place without this reunion. If wires are extended from each centre, they extend or change the locality of the hemispheres; and if the wires are extended for any number of miles, the original power between the conductor and rubber is merely extended with the poles of the wires, and a junction of the poles, whenever it takes place, is still but as the union of the rubber and conductor, and collapse of the original hemispheres, as they are continued to the respective poles of the wires. Wherever, or however, there is electrical action, there are equal hemispheres diverging on each side, in radii from the foci or planes of excitement.

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11. That the class of bodies called ELECTRICs, of which there are various degrees, are such as permit the excitement to act in and through their pores or laminæ, in right lines or radii only, as glass, or wax, or air, or the fluids in galvanic cells. mitting the action on their surface to exhaust itself in and through their substance, so as to create hemispheres of electrics, they are like porous pipes in conducting a fluid, as they do not permit it to travel laterally over their surfaces, or are non-conductors. They receive excitement, because their power of conducting heat from rubbed, or any-how excited surfaces, is less than the power which unites the oxygen to the hydrogen; for if heated through, or rubbed on both sides, they display no excitement.

12. That the class of bodies called coNDUCTORS, of which there are various degrees,

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