e the
conducting medium between the two extremities of the pile.

As no conductors of electricity are absolutely perfect, there must be
produced a certain accumulation of vitreous ether on one side of each
charged plate of the Galvanic pile, and of resinous ether on the other
side of it, before the discharge takes place, even though the
conducting medium be in apparent contact. When the discharge does take
place, the whole of the accumulated electricity explodes and vanishes;
and then an instant of time is required for the silver and zinc again
to attract from the air, or other bodies in their vicinity, their
spontaneous natural atmospheres, and then another discharge ensues;
and so repeatedly and perpetually till the surface of one of the
metallic plates becomes so much oxydated or calcined, that it ceases
to act.

Hence a perpetual motion may be said to be produced, with an incessant
decomposition of water into the two gasses of oxygen and hydrogen;
which must probably be constantly proceeding on all moist Surfaces,
where a chain of electric conductors exists, surrounded with different
proportions of the two electric ethers. Whence the ceaseless
liberation of oxygen from the water has oxydated or calcined the ores
of metals near the surface of the earth, as of manganese, of zinc into
lapis calaminaris, of iron into various ochres, and other calciform
ores. From this source also the corrosion of some metals may be
traced, when they are immersed in water in the vicinity of each
other, as when the copper sheathing of ships was held on by iron
nails. And hence another great operation of nature is probably
produced, I mean the restoration of oxygen to the atmosphere from the
surface of the earth in dewy mornings, as well as from the
perspiration of vegetable leaves; which atmospheric oxygen is hourly
destructible by the respiration of animals and plants, by combustion,
and by other oxydations.

6. The combination of the electric ethers with metallic bodies, before
mentioned appears from the Galvanic pile; since, according to the
experiments of Mr. Davy, when an acid is mixed with the water placed
between the alternate pairs of silver and zinc plates, a much greater
electric shock is produced by the same pile; and an anonymous writer
in the Phil. Magaz. No. 36, for May 1801, asserts, that when the
intervening cloths or papers are moistened with pure alcali, as a
solution of pure ammonia, the effect is greater than by an