Page:Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Vol 4.djvu/76

Rh Wilson. Communicated by S. H. Christie, Esq., M.A., Sec. R.S.

The author states that the Régar of India is found, by chemical analysis, to consist of silica, in a minute state of division, together with lime, alumina, oxide of iron, and minute portions of vegetable and animal débris. Hence it is usually considered as having been formed by the disintegration of trap rocks: the author, however, after examining its numerous trap dykes traversing the formation of the ceded districts, which he found invariably to decompose into a ferruginous red soil, perfectly distinct from the stratum of black régar through which the trap protrudes, was led to regard this opinion of its origin as erroneous: and from the circumstance of its forming an extensive stratum of soil covering a large portion of the peninsula of India, he believes it to be a sedimentary deposit from waters in a state of repose.

Specimens of basaltic trap and of the Régar soil were transmitted to the Society by the author, for the purpose of analysis.

The reading of a paper, entitled, "Experimental Researches in Electricity," Thirteenth Series, by Michael Faraday, Esq,, D.C.L., F.R.S., &c., was resumed but not concluded.

Simon MacGillivray, Esq., was elected a Fellow of the Society.

The reading of a paper, entitled, "Experimental Researches in Electricity," Thirteenth Series, by Michael Faraday, Esq., D.C.L., F.R.S., was resumed but not concluded.

John Hardwick, John Macneill, and Edward William Tuson, Esqs., were elected Fellows of the Society.

The reading of a paper, entitled, "Experimental Researches in Electricity," Thirteenth Series, by Michael Faraday, Esq., D.C.L., F.R.S., was resumed and concluded.

The author, in this paper, pursues the inquiry into the general differences observable in the luminous phenomena of the electric discharge, according as they proceed from bodies in the positive or the negative states, with a view to discover the cause of those differences. For the convenience of description he employs the term inductric, to designate those bodies from which the induction originates, and inducteous to denote those whose electric state is disturbed by this inductive action. He finds that an electric spark, passing from a small ball, rendered positively inducteous, to another ball of larger diameter, is considerably longer than when the same