Page:Experimental researches in chemistry and.djvu/470

1857.] the former are hid amongst those of the latter, we do not for an instant doubt the conservation, but are moved to look for the manner in which the forces are, for the time, disposed, or if they have taken up another form of force, to search what that form may be.

Even chemical action at a distance, which is in such antithetical contrast with the ordinary exertion of chemical affinity, since it can produce effects miles away from the particles on which they depend, and which are effectual only by forces acting at insensible distances, still proves the same thing, the conservation of force. Preparations can be made for a chemical action in the simple voltaic circuit, but until the circuit be complete that action does not occur; yet in completing we can so arrange the circuit, that a distant chemical action, the perfect equivalent of the dominant chemical action, shall be produced; and this result, whilst it establishes the electrochemical equivalent of power, establishes the principle of the conservation of force also, and at the same time suggests many collateral inquiries which have yet to be made and answered, before all that concerns the conservation in this case can be understood.

This and other instances of chemical action at a distance, carry our inquiring thoughts on from the facts to the physical mode of the exertion of force; for the qualities which seem located and fixed to certain particles of matter appear at a distance in connexion with particles altogether different. They also lead our thoughts to the conversion of one form of power into another: as for instance, in the heat which the elements of a voltaic pile may either show at the place where they act by their combustion or combination together; or in the distance, where the electric spark may be rendered manifest; or in the wire or fluids of the different parts of the circuit.

When we occupy ourselves with the dual forms of power, electricity and magnetism, we find great latitude of assumption; and necessarily so, for the powers become more and more complicated in their conditions. But still there is no apparent desire to loosen the force of the principle of conservation, even in those cases where the appearance and disappearance of force may seem most evident and striking. Electricity appears when there is consumption of no other force than that