Mr. Gassiot finally concludes that the cause of the stratified discharge arising from the impulses of a force acting upon highly attenuated but resisting media is also applicable to the discharge of the voltaic battery in vacuo; while the fact of this discharge even in its full intensity having been now ascertained to be also stratified leads to the conclusion that the ordinary discharge of the voltaic battery, under every condition, is not continuous but intermittent, that it consists of a series of pulsations or vibrations of greater or less velocity, according to the resistance in the chemical or metallic elements of the battery or the conducting media through which the discharge passes. Caustic potash absorbs the carbonic acid gas by degrees, and at last so completely exhausts a vacuum tube that electricity cannot be conducted. Air is a non-conductor, and an electric discharge that will not pass through an inch of air, will pass through more than 30 or 40 inches of attenuated gas. It has already been mentioned that the stratified discharge can be obtained by a single discharge of the primary current of an inductive coil, however long may be the vacuum tube through which the discharge is passed. If no addition be made to the battery and no alteration be made in the arrangement of the coil so as to increase or diminish the intensity of the discharge, the stratifications will always present the same appearance and form, occupying the same spaces and positions in the vacuum tube; but if any change be made so as to alter the intensity, then a corresponding alteration will appear in the discharge, the striæ assuming a different shape, and the bright and dark divisions occupying different positions. In order to try what effect a change of intensity would produce, three separate insulated voltaic batteries, in which the exciting liquid was brine, formed an electric circuit which was completed by two long wires. It was so arranged that the discharge of one, two, or all the three batteries could be separately employed. In order to vary the resistance at pleasure, two tubes 18 inches long containing distilled water and connected at their base were introduced into the circuit. By varying the depth to which the terminal wires of the circuit were plunged into the water, the resistance could be regulated at pleasure, and it was immaterial in what part of the circuit the vacuum tube was introduced provided the circuit was completed.