Among the Italians who caught at Galvani's discovery, the most skilful and learned was Professor Volta, of Como, who had been an ardent electrician from his youth. Many of our readers have seen this year the colossal statue of that great man, which adorns his native city on the southern shore of the lake. The statue was worthily decreed, because the matt who contributes ever so little to a grand discovery in science--provided that little is essential to it--ranks among the greatest benefactors of his species. And what did the admirable Volta discover? Reducing the labors of his long life to their simplest expression, we should say that his just claim to immortality consists in this,--he found out that the frog had nothing to do with the production of electricity in Galvani's experiment, but that a wet card or rag would do as well. This discovery was the central fact of his scientific career of sixty-four years. It took all of his familiar knowledge of electricity, acquired in twenty-seven years of entire devotion to the study, to enable him to interpret Galvani's apparatus so far as to get rid of the frog; and he spent the remaining thirty-seven years of his existence in varying the experiment thus freed from that "demd, damp, moist, unpleasant body." It was a severe affliction to the followers of Galvani and to the University of Bologna to have their darling theory of the nervous electricity so rudely yet so unanswerably refuted. "I do not need your frog!" exclaimed the too impetuous Volta. "Give me two metals and a moist rag, and I will produce your animal electricity. Your frog is nothing but a moist conductor, and in this respect is not as good as a wet rag." This was a decisive fact, and it silenced all but a few of the disciples of the dead Galvani.