E-text prepared by Paul Murray, Richard Prairie, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team from images generously made available by the Bibliotheque nationale de France (BnF/Gallica) at http://gallica.bnf.fr. EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCHES IN ELECTRICITY by MICHAEL FARADAY, D.C.L. F.R.S. Fullerian Profesor of Chemistry in the Royal Institution. Corresponding Member, etc. of the Royal and Imperial Academies of Science of Paris, Petersburgh, Florence, Copenhagen, Berlin, Gottingen, Modena, Stockholm, Palermo, etc. etc. In Two Volumes VOL. I. Second Edition Reprinted from the PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS of 1831-1838. London: Richard and John Edward Taylor, Printers and Publishers to the University of London, Red Lion Court, Fleet Street 1849 PREFACE I have been induced by various circumstances to collect in One Volume the Fourteen Series of Experimental Researches in Electricity, which have appeared in the Philosophical Transactions during the last seven years: the chief reason has been the desire to supply at a moderate price the whole of these papers, with an Index, to those who may desire to have them. The readers of the volume will, I hope, do me the justice to remember that it was not written as a _whole_, but in parts; the earlier portions rarely having any known relation at the time to those which might follow. If I had rewritten the work, I perhaps might have considerably varied the form, but should not have altered much of the real matter: it would not, however, then have been considered a faithful reprint or statement of the course and results of the whole investigation, which only I desired to supply. I may be allowed to express my great satisfaction at finding, that the different parts, written at intervals during seven years, harmonize so well as they do. There would have been nothing particular in this, if the parts had related only to matters well-ascertained before any of them were written:--but as each professes to contain something of original discovery, or of correction of received views, it does surprise even my partiality, that they should have the degree of consistency and apparent general accuracy which they seem to me to present. I have made some alterations in the text, but they have been altogether of a typographical or grammatical character; and even where greatest, have been intended to explain the sense, not to alter it. I have often added Notes at the bottom of the page, as to paragraphs 59, 360, 439, 521, 552, 555, 598, 657, 883, for the correction of errors, and also the purpose of illustration: but these are all distinguished from the Original Notes of the Researches by the date of _Dec. 1838_.