Faraday did not see fit at this time to accept the idea, suggested indeed by himself in 1831, that these effects of self-induction were the analogue of momentum or inertia. That explanation he set aside on finding that the same wire when coiled had greater self-inductive action than when straight. Had he at that time grasped this analogy, he would have seen that the very property which gives rise to the spark at break of circuit also retards the rapid growth of a current; and then the experiment described above would have shown him that Sir W. Snow Harris was right in preferring flat copper ribbon to a round wire of equivalent section as a material for lightning conductors. He was, however, disappointed to find so small a difference between round wires and parallel strands. The memoir as published contains an exceedingly interesting conclusion:-- Notwithstanding that the effects appear only at the making and breaking of contact (the current, remaining unaffected, seemingly, in the interval,) I cannot resist the impression that there is some connected and correspondent effect produced by this lateral action of the elements of the electric stream during the time of its continuance. An action of this kind, in fact, is evident in the magnetic relations of the parts of the current. But admitting (as we may do for the moment) the magnetic forces to constitute the power which produces such striking and different results at the commencement and termination of a current, still there appears to be a link in the chain of effects--a wheel in the physical mechanism of the action, as yet unrecognised. The tenth series of researches, on the voltaic battery, though completed in October, 1834, was not published till June, 1835. [Sidenote: ACTION IN A MEDIUM.] The next research, begun in the autumn of 1835, after a lull of about eight months, lasted over two years. It was not completed till December, 1837. This investigation took Faraday away from magnetic and electrochemical matters to the old subject of statical electric charges, a subject hitherto untouched in his researches. But he had long brooded over the question as to the nature of an electric charge. Over and over again, as he had watched the inductive effect of electric currents acting from wire to wire, his mind turned to the old problem of the inductive influence--discovered eighty years before, by John Canton--exerted, apparently at a distance, by electric charges. He had learned to distrust action at a distance, and now the time was ripe for a searching inquiry as to whether electric _influence_, or induction[44] as it was then called, was also an action propagated by contiguous actions in the intervening medium.