“AN INQUIRY INTO THE NATURE AND RESULTS OF F.T.ECTRICrTY AND
MAGNETISM." (To THE EDITOR or THE "HpRerAioa."1 SIR,—Your last number contained a short notice of the above- named work, recently published by me. I take no exception to what was said about it, but wish, with your permission, to have the opportunity of making it known that this work is an attempt to solve—how far a successful attempt I must leave to others to determine—certain important questions in electrical science. Let me single out one or two of those which have been made the subject of investigation. Sir H. Davy long ago asserted that electrical power is in its nature identical with chemical power. There was a difficulty, however, which stood in the way of our accepting this theory. Electricity under certain circumstances attracts, under different circumstances seems to repel, whereas all chemical action arises out of the attraction of affinity. I have endeavoured to show that the complicated movements which take place between electrified bodies and electric currents, when mutually acting one upon the other, can be satisfactorily ex- plained without ascribing to electricity any repulsive force. And when once electricity has been stripped of repulsive force, there is no longer any difficulty in identifying electrical and chemical action one with the other. Again, the relation which exists between chemico and thermo-electricity has never yet been pro- perly cleared up. I have, I trust, been able to bring out to view the connecting-link which binds together these two different forms of electricity.
Once more, no satisfactory explanation has yet been given why it is that the magnetic needle points over about one-half of the globe to the east, and over the other half of the globe to the west of the North Pole. I have, I think, been able to account for this fact, and to account also, in great part, for the variations, diurnal, annual, and secular, to which the magnetic current upon the earth is subject.
I fear to trespass further upon your space, and remit to the judgment of your scientific readers these and other mattfers which
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