of A, and therefore caused by induction, although the influencing and influenced bodies cannot be joined by a right line passing through the air.  Or if, the electrometers being removed, a point be fixed at the back of the ball in its uninsulated state as at C, this point will become luminous and discharge the conductor A. The latter experiment is described by Nicholson[A], who, however, reasons erroneously upon it.  As to its introduction here, though it is a case of discharge, the discharge is preceded by induction, and that induction must be in curved lines.

  [A] Encyclopaedia Britannica, vol. vi. p. 504.

1231.  As argument against the received theory of induction and in favour of that which I have ventured to put forth, I cannot see how the preceding results can be avoided.  The effects are clearly inductive effects produced by electricity, not in currents but in its statical state, and this induction is exerted in lines of force which, though in many experiments they may be straight, are here curved more or less according to circumstances.  I use the term line of inductive force merely as a temporary conventional mode of expressing the direction of the power in cases of induction; and in the experiments with the hemisphere (1224.), it is curious to see how, when certain lines have terminated on the under surface and edge of the metal, those which were before lateral to them expand and open out from each other, some bending round and terminating their action on the upper surface of the hemisphere, and others meeting, as it were, above in their progress outwards, uniting their forces to give an increased charge to the carrier ball, at an increased distance from the source of power, and influencing each other so as to cause a second flexure in the contrary direction from the first one.  All this appears to me to prove that the whole action is one of contiguous particles, related to each other, not merely in the lines which they may be conceived to form through the dielectric, between the inductric and the inducteous surfaces (1483.), but in other lateral directions also.  It is this which gives an effect equivalent to a lateral repulsion or expansion in the lines of force I have spoken of, and enables induction to turn a corner (1304.).  The power, instead of being like that of gravity, which causes particles to act on each other through straight lines, whatever other particles may be between them, is more analogous to that of a series of magnetic needles, or to the condition of the particles considered as forming the whole of a straight or a curved magnet.  So that in whatever way I view it, and with great suspicion of the influence of favourite notions over myself, I cannot perceive how the ordinary theory applied to explain induction can be a correct representation of that great natural principle of electrical action.

1232.  I have had occasion in describing the precautions necessary in the use of the inductive apparatus, to refer to one founded on induction in curved lines (1203.); and after the experiments already described, it will easily be seen how great an influence the shell-lac stem may exert upon the charge of the carrier ball when applied to the apparatus (1218.), unless that precaution be attended to.