The old methods of covering metals with a plating of silver were so difficult and laborious, that durable ware could never have been produced by them except at an expense which would have defeated the object. In those slow and costly ways plated articles were made as late as the year 1840; and thus they might be made at the present moment, if Signora Galvani had been looking the other way when the student touched the frog with his knife. More than fifty years elapsed before that chance discovery was made available in the art we are considering. For many years the discoveries of Galvani and Volta did not appear to add much to the resources of man, though they excited his "special wonder," Elderly readers can perhaps remember the appalling accounts that used to be published, forty years ago or more, of the galvanizing of criminals after execution. In 1811, at Glasgow, a noted chemist tried the effect of a voltaic "pile" of two hundred and seventy pairs of plates upon the body of a murderer. As the various parts of the nervous system were subjected to the current, the most startling results followed. The whole body shuddered as with cold; one of the legs nearly kicked an attendant over; the chest heaved, and the lungs inhaled and exhaled. At one time, when all the power of the instrument was exerted, we are told that "every muscle of the countenance was simultaneously thrown into fearful action. Rage, horror, despair and anguish, and ghastly smiles, united their hideous expression on the murderer's face, surpassing far the wildest representations of a Fuseli or a Kean. At this period several of the spectators were obliged to leave the room from terror or sickness, and one gentleman fainted." The bodies of horses, oxen, and sheep were galvanized, with results the most surprising. Five men were unable to hold the leg of a horse subjected to the action of a powerful battery.