Page:On the various forces of nature and their relations to each other.djvu/158

154 one to another). Now, if instead of only using one vessel, as I have shewn there, I take another, and another, and put in zinc and platinum, zinc and platinum, zinc and platinum, and connect the platinum of one vessel with the zinc of another, the platinum of this vessel with the zinc of that, and so on, we should only be using a series of these vessels instead of one. This we have done in that arrangement which you see behind me. I am using what we call a Grove's voltaic battery, in which one metal is zinc, and the other platinum, and I have as many as forty pairs of these plates all exercising their force at once in sending the whole amount of chemical power there evolved through these wires under the floor, and up to these two rods coming through the table. We need do no more than just bring these two ends in contact, when the spark shews us what power is present; and what a strange thing it is to see that this force is brought away from the battery behind me, and carried along through these wires. I have here an apparatus (fig. 46) which Sir Humphry Davy constructed many years ago, in order to see whether this power from the voltaic