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Boston, Published by Hilliard, Gray & Co

take place between the air and the natural quantity of the electric fluid in the conductor, so as to draw it to, and accumulate it on, the end opposite to that approached by the tube; since bodies, possessing only their natural quantity of that fluid, are not usually seen to attract each other, or to affect mutually the quantities of electricity each contains.

There are likewise appearances of repulsion in other parts of nature. Not to mention the violent force with which the particles of water, heated to a certain degree, separate from each other, or those of gunpowder, when touched with the smallest spark of fire, there is the seeming repulsion between the same poles of the magnet, a body containing a subtile movable fluid in many respects analogous to the electric fluid. If two magnets are so suspended by strings, as that their poles of the same denomination are opposite to each other, they will separate and continue so; or, if you lay a magnetic steel bar on a smooth table, and approach it with another parallel to it, the poles of both in the same position, the first will recede from the second, so as to avoid the contact, and may thus be pushed (or at least appear to be pushed) off the table. Can this be ascribed to the attraction of any surrounding body or matter drawing them asunder, or drawing the one away from the other? If not, and repulsion exists in nature, and in magnetism, why may it not exist in electricity? We should not, indeed, multiply causes in philosophy without necessity; and the greater simplicity of your hypothesis would recommend it to me, if I could see that all appearances would be solved by it. But I find, or think I find, the two causes more convenient than Thus I might solve the circular motion of your horizontal stick, supported on a pivot, with two pins at their ends, pointing contrary ways, and

one of them alone.

VOL. V

49

GG

moving in the same direction when electrified, whether positively or negatively; when positively, the air opposite to the points, being electrized positively, repels the points; when negatively, the air opposite the points also, by their means, electrized negatively, attraction takes place between the electricity in the air behind the heads of the pins and the negative pins, and so they are, in this case drawn in the same direction that in the other they were driven. You see I am willing to meet you half way, a complaisance I have not met with in our brother Nollet, or any other hypothesismaker, and therefore may value myself a little upon it, especially as they say I have some ability in defending even the wrong side of a question, when I think fit to take it in hand.

What you give as an established law of the electric fluid, "That quantities of different densities mutually attract each other, in order to restore the equilibrium," is, I think, not well founded, or else not well expressed. Two large cork balls, suspended by silk strings, and both well and equally electrified, separate to a great distance. By bringing into contact with one of them another ball of the same size, suspended likewise by silk, you will take from it half its electricity. It will then, indeed, hang at a less distance from the other, but the full and the half quantities will not appear to attract each other, that is, the balls will not come together. Indeed, I do not know any proof we have, that one quantity of electric fluid is attracted by another quantity of that fluid, whatever difference there may be in their densities. And, supposing in nature a mutual attraction between two parcels of any kind of matter, it would be strange if this attraction should subsist strongly while those parcels were unequal, and cease when more matter of the same kind was added

to the smallest parcel, so as to make it equal to the biggest. By all the laws of attraction in matter, that we are acquainted with, the attraction is stronger in proportion to the increase of the masses, and never in proportion to the difference of the masses. I should rather think the law would be, "That the electric fluid is attracted strongly by all other matter that we know of, while the parts of that fluid mutually repel each other." Hence its being equally diffused (except in particular circumstances) throughout all other matter. But this you jokingly call "electrical orthodoxy." It is so with some at present, but not with all; and, perhaps, it may not always be orthodoxy with anybody. Opinions are continually varying, where we cannot have mathematical evidence of the nature of things; and they must vary. Nor is that variation without its use, since it occasions a more thorough discussion, whereby error is often dissipated, true knowledge is increased, and its principles become better understood and more firmly established.

Air should have, as you observe, "its share of the common stock of electricity, as well as glass, and, perhaps, all other electrics per se." But I suppose, that, like them, it does not easily part with what it has, or receive more, unless when mixed with some non-electric, as moisture, for instance, of which there is some in our driest air. This, however, is only a supposition; and your experiment of restoring electricity to a negatively electrized person, by extending his arm upwards into the air, with a needle between his fingers, on the point of which light may be seen in the night, is, indeed, a curious one. In this town the air is generally moister than with us, and here I have seen Mr. Canton electrify the air in one room positively, and in another, which communicated by a door, he has electrized the air

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