those of the digestive organs. This state of morbid irritability of the whole frame continues till the north or west wind, as Bridone has well expressed it, "awakens the activity of the animating power of electricity, which soon restores our energies and enlivens all nature, which seemed to droop and languish in its absence."

In very frosty weather, on the other hand, when the atmosphere is surcharged with electricity, there is a corresponding elevation of spirits, which sometimes amounts to an almost painful state of excitement. In our temperate climate, this phenomenon, perhaps, is seldom experienced, but, in a certain degree, its influence in very cold dry weather is evident enough. On a frosty day, for one melancholy mien we observe, we meet a hundred smiling faces, the hilarity of whose expression is due to no other cause than that which has been just named. Rousseau has eloquently described the extraordinary elasticity of spirits which he experienced in ascending some of the higher regions of the Alps. Every traveller is aware of the more than usual lively sentiment of existence which he feels within him when he is traversing a lofty mountain.

The painful effects arising from too much electricity in the air, were experienced by Pro

fessor Saussure and his companion, while ascending the Alps they were caught amidst thunder clouds, and were astonished to find their bodies filled with electricity, and every part of them so saturated with it, that spontaneous sparks were emitted with a crackling noise, and the same painful sensations which are felt by those who are electrified by art.

Larrey, in his memoirs of the Russian campaign, mentions his having seen similar effects, from the excess of the electric fluid. On one occasion, he says, when the cold was excessive, the manes of the horses were found electrified in a manner similar to that described by Saussure.

Altogether it is truly wonderful, that an agent that exerts so powerful an influence on vitality, should have met with so little inquiry from the time of Priestly to that of Davy, or at least that no discovery, except that of electro-chemical agency, should have resulted from any inquiry that may have been attempted. And that wonder is the greater, when we recall the prophetic enthusiasm with which both of those illustrious men, whom we have just named, have spoken of the results which science has to expect from the enlargement of our knowledge of the elements of electricity.

Mr. Faraday, however, we are happy to find, has lately taken up this neglected branch of science, and made discoveries which are likely to lead to most important results.

Sir Humphrey Davy concluded the account of the extraordinary effects he had experienced by the application of electrical agency to chemical action, in these words: "Natural electricity has hitherto been little investigated, except in the case of its evident and powerful concentration in the atmosphere. Its slow and silent operations in every part of the surface of the globe will probably be found more immediately and importantly connected with the order and economy of nature: and investigation on this subject can hardly fail to enlighten our philosophical systems of the earth, and may possibly place new powers within our reach."

Priestly sums up his opinions on this subject in these emphatic terms:-"Electricity seems to be an inlet into the internal structures of bodies, on which all their sensible properties depend: by pursuing, therefore, this new light, the bounds of natural science may possibly be extended beyond what we now can form any idea of. New worlds may be opened to our view, and the glory of the great Sir Isaac Newton himself may be eclipsed, by a new set of pilosophers, in quite a new field of speculation."

Before we conclude this subject, there is a circumstance respecting Davy and his biographer, Dr. Paris, deserving of attention. It appears that Davy, in common with many enlighted philosophers and physicians of the present day, was dissatisfied with the explanation which is commonly given of the physiology of respiration, and the mode in which heat is supposed to be evolved by that process. Where Davy doubted, he was not a man likely to be stopped in the search of truth, by the jargon of science or the plausible fallacies of physiology. He accordingly applied himself to the discovery of a more satisfactory theory of respiration, and the result of his inquiries was, that the nervous fluid was identical with electricity, and that the heat that was supposed to be evolved by the process of respiration, was extricated by electrical agency.

This theory of the identity of the nervous fluid with electricity, we look upon as a conjecture (discovery it cannot be called) which will one day lead to more important results than have arisen from the grandest of his electro-chemical discoveries.

His biographer tells us that "in considering the theory of respiration, Davy supposed that phosoxygen combined with the venous blood without decomposition; but on reaching the brain that

electricity was liberated, which he believed to be identical with the nervous fluid. Supposing sensations to be motions of the nervous ether, or light, in the form of electricity exciting the medullary substance of the nerves and brain.”

This opinion Dr. Paris calls "a theory which has scarcely a parallel in extravagance and absurdity!!!" These are strong terms. Science, we think, should discard the use of harsh ones, but whatever be the fate of this opinion of Davy's, the commentary has no parallel in presumption.

The theory of the identity of the nervous and electric fluid may receive little countenance for a time; it may be too much contemned to attract even the notoriety of opposition to its doctrine; it may be buried in oblivion for half a century, but the ghost of this opinion will rise again, though it may not be in judgment against its impugners—their peaceful slumbers will probably be too profound to be incommoded by the resurgam of the opinion they opposed. Perhaps when Davy propounded it, he might have thought like Kepler, "My theory may not be received at present, but posterity will adopt it. I can afford to wait thirty or forty years for the world's justice, since nature has waited three thousand years for an observer;" for Davy, like Kepler, had his moments of "glorious egotism," but like the astronomer, he had genius to redeem his vanity.