On August 30th, 1845, Faraday for the sixth time set to work in his laboratory to search for the connection between light and electricity for which he had so often looked, and about which he had so boldly speculated. He began by looking for some effect to be produced on polarised light by passing it through a liquid which was undergoing electrolysis. What effect precisely he expected to observe is unknown. Doubtless he had an open mind to perceive effects of any kind had such occurred. Earlier in the century the phenomena of polarised light had been worked out in great detail, through a host of beautiful phenomena, by Arago, Biot, Brewster, and others; and their discoveries had shown that this agent is capable of revealing in transparent substances details of structure which otherwise would be quite invisible. Placed between two Nicol prisms or two slices of tourmaline, to serve respectively as “polariser” and “analyser,” thin sheets of transparent crystal--selenite or mica--were made to reveal the fact that they possessed an axis of maximum elasticity. For when the analyser and polariser were set in the “crossed” position, where the one would cut off all the luminous vibrations that the other would transmit, no light would be visible to the observer, unless in the intervening space there were interposed some substance endowed with one of two properties, either that of resolving some part of the vibrations into an oblique direction or else that of rotating the plane of the vibrations to right or to left. If either of these things is done, light appears through the analyser. It is thus that structure is observed in horn and in starch grains. It is thus that the strains in a piece of compressed glass are made visible. It is thus that crystalline structures generally can be studied. It is thus that the discovery was made of the substances which possess the strange property of twisting or rotating the plane of polarisation of light--namely, quartz crystal, solutions of sugar and of certain alkaloids, and certain other liquids, such as turpentine. Such was the agent which Faraday proposed to employ to detect whether electric forces impress any quality resembling that of _structure_ upon transparent materials. The notes begin with the words:-- “I have had a glass trough made 24 inches long, 1 inch wide and about 1½ deep, in which to decompose electrolites and, whilst under decomposition, along which I could pass a ray of light in different conditions and afterwards examine it.”