65. This peculiar condition exerts no retarding or accelerating power upon electrical currents passing through metal thus circumstanced (20. 33.). Neither could any such power upon the inducing current itself be detected; for when masses of metal, wires, helices, &c. were arranged in all possible ways by the side of a wire or helix, carrying a current measured by the galvanometer (20.), not the slightest permanent change in the indication of the instrument could be perceived. Metal in the supposed peculiar state, therefore, conducts electricity in all directions with its ordinary facility, or, in other words, its conducting power is not sensibly altered by it. 66. All metals take on the peculiar state. This is proved in the preceding experiments with copper and iron (9.), and with gold, silver, tin, lead, zinc, antimony, bismuth, mercury, &c. by experiments to be described in the fourth part (132.), admitting of easy application. With regard to iron, the experiments prove the thorough and remarkable independence of these phenomena of induction, and the ordinary magnetical appearances of that metal. 67. This state is altogether the effect of the induction exerted, and ceases as soon as the inductive force is removed. It is the same state, whether produced by the collateral passage of voltaic currents (26.), or the formation of a magnet (34. 36.), or the mere approximation of a magnet (39. 50.); and is a strong proof in addition to those advanced by M. Ampere, of the identity of the agents concerned in these several operations. It probably occurs, momentarily, during the passage of the common electric spark (24.), and may perhaps be obtained hereafter in bad conductors by weak electrical currents or other means (74. 76). 68. The state appears to be instantly assumed (12.), requiring hardly a sensible portion of time for that purpose. The _difference_ of time between volta-electric and magneto-electric induction, rendered evident by the galvanometer (59.), may probably be thus explained. When a voltaic current is sent through one of two parallel wires, as those of the hollow helix (34.), a current is produced in the other wire, as brief in its continuance as the time required for a single action of this kind, and which, by experiment, is found to be inappreciably small. The action will seem still more instantaneous, because, as there is an accumulation of power in the poles of the battery before contact, the first rush of electricity in the wire of communication is greater than that sustained after the contact is completed; the wire of induction becomes at the moment electro-tonic to an equivalent degree, which the moment after sinks to the state in which the continuous current can sustain it, but in sinking, causes an opposite induced current to that at first produced. The consequence is, that the first induced wave of electricity more resembles that from the discharge of an electric jar, than it otherwise would do.