Page:On the various forces of nature and their relations to each other.djvu/169

Rh importance in the precipitation of metals and formation of mineral veins, and so forth. These actions are not for a limited time, like my battery here, but they act for ever in small degrees, accumulating more and more of the results.

I have here given you all the illustrations that time will permit me to shew you of chemical affinity producing electricity, and electricity again becoming chemical affinity. Let that suffice for the present, and let us now go a little deeper into the subject of this chemical force, or this electricity—which shall I name first—the one producing the other in a variety of ways? These forces are also wonderful in their power of producing another of the forces we have been considering, namely, that of magnetism; and you know that it is only of late years, and long since I was born, that the discovery of the relations of these two forces of electricity and chemical affinity to produce magnetism have become known. Philosophers had been suspecting this affinity for a long time, and had long had great hopes of success; for in the pursuit of science we first start with