will come into consideration hereafter, and probably varies in different bodies, and so produces variety of electrical relation[A].  All I am anxious about at present is, that a more particular meaning should not be attached to the expressions used than I contemplate.  Further inquiry, I trust, will enable us by degrees to restrict the sense more and more, and so render the explanation of electrical phenomena day by day more and more definite.

  [A] See now 1685. &c.—­Dec. 1838.

1305.  As a test of the probable accuracy of my views, I have throughout this experimental examination compared them with the conclusions drawn by M. Poisson from his beautiful mathematical inquiries[A].  I am quite unfit to form a judgment of these admirable papers; but as far as I can perceive, the theory I have set forth and the results I have obtained are not in opposition to such of those conclusions as represent the final disposition and state of the forces in the limited number of cases be has considered.  His theory assumes a very different mode of action in induction to that which I have ventured to support, and would probably find its mathematical test in the endeavour to apply it to cases of induction in curved lines.  To my feeling it is insufficient in accounting for the retention of electricity upon the surface of conductors by the pressure of the air, an effect which I hope to show is simple and consistent according to the present view[B]; and it does not touch voltaic electricity, or in any way associate it and what is called ordinary electricity under one common principle.

[A] Memoires de L’Institut, 1811, tom. xii. the first page 1, and the second paging 163.

  [B] Refer to 1377, 1378, 1379, 1398.—­Dec. 1838.

I have also looked with some anxiety to the results which that indefatigable philosopher Harris has obtained in his investigation of the laws of induction[A], knowing that they were experimental, and having a full conviction of their exactness; but I am happy in perceiving no collision at present between them and the views I have taken.

  [A] Philosophical Transactions, 1834, p. 213.

1306.  Finally, I beg to say that I put forth my particular view with doubt and fear, lest it should not bear the test of general examination, for unless true it will only embarrass the progress of electrical science.  It has long been on my mind, but I hesitated to publish it until the increasing persuasion of its accordance with all known facts, and the manner in which it linked together effects apparently very different in kind, urged me to write the present paper.  I as yet see no inconsistency between it and nature, but, on the contrary, think I perceive much new light thrown by it on her operations; and my next papers will be devoted to a review of the phenomena of conduction, electrolyzation, current, magnetism, retention, discharge, and some other points, with an application of the theory to these effects, and an examination of it by them.