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of natural philosophy, and which also by reason of its greater accessibility may be given in a more strict form. To achieve this especial purpose, and at the same time as an introduction to the subject itself, I give as a forerunner of the compressed mathematical investigation, a more free, but not on that account a less connected, general view of the process and its results.

Memoir based on Three Laws.—Three laws, of which the first expresses the mode of distribution of the electricity within one and the same body; the second, the mode of dispersion of the electricity in the surrounding atmosphere; and the third, the mode of appearance of the electricity at the place of contact of two heterogeneous bodies, forms the basis of the entire Memoir, and at the same time contains everything that does not lay claim to being completely established.

The two latter are purely experimental laws; but the first from its nature is, in part at least, theoretical.

With regard to this first law, I have started from the supposition that the com-