Soon after the discovery by Oersted just referred to, Faraday, with the care and ability manifest in all his experiments, showed that when an intermittent current of electricity is passing along a wire it induces a current in any wire forming a complete circuit and placed parallel to it, and that if the two wires were made into two helices and placed parallel to each other the effect was more marked. This Faraday designated "Volta-electric induction," and it is with this kind of induction I wish to engage your attention this evening; for it is a phenomenon which presents some of the most interesting and important facts in electrical science. Here are two flat spirals of silk-covered copper wire suspended separately, spider-web fashion, in wooden frames marked respectively A and B. The one marked A is so connected that reversals at any desired speed per minute from a battery of one or more cells can be passed through it. The one marked B is so connected to the galvanometer and a reverser as to show the deflection caused by the induced currents, which are momentary in duration, and in the galvanometer circuit all on the same side of zero, for as the battery current on making contact produces an induced current in the reverse direction to itself, but in the same direction on breaking the contact, of course the one would neutralize the other, and the galvanometer would not be affected; the galvanometer connections are therefore reversed with each reversal of the battery current, and by that means the induced currents are, as you perceive, all in the same direction and produce a steady deflection. The connections are as shown on the sheet before you marked 1, which I think requires no further explanation. Before proceeding, please to bear in mind the fact that the inductive effects vary inversely as the square of the distance between the two spirals, when parallel to each other; and that the induced current in B is proportional to the number of reversals of the battery current passing through spiral A, and also to the strength of the current so passing. Faraday's fertile imagination would naturally suggest the question, "Is this lateral action, which we call magnetism, extended to a distance by the action of intermediate particles?" If so, then it is reasonable to expect that all substances would not be affected in the same way, and therefore different results would be obtained if different media were interposed between the inductor and what I will merely call, for distinction, the inductometer.