However much we may admire the experimental address displayed in this paper, we must confess that its results are very far from being satisfactory. His having assumed, without proof, and even without examination, the theory that a perfect vacuum cannot be produced in the Torricellian tube, and made it the foundation of his reasonings, appears to me to have vitiated all his conclusions. Mr. Faraday has rendered it extremely probable, that a _limit_ does actually exist to the production of vapour by bodies placed _in vacuo_,[76] beneath which they are perfectly fixed; and if this be true, it is evident that, at low temperatures, a perfect vacuum may be produced in the Torricellian tube; and it is highly probable that Davy did thus actually produce one in several of his experiments; especially in those where he found that, by a farther reduction of temperature, no farther diminution of electrical effect was perceptible: he had in fact arrived at this limit to vaporization, and therefore a farther reduction of temperature could not possibly influence the phenomena. In this point of view, the electrical light would seem to be _primary_, or independent of foreign matter.--But though the premises be granted, let the reader pause before he hastens to any conclusion; for the cloud of mystery has not been dissipated, it has only changed its place. At the termination of his paper, Davy indulges in a conjecture subversive of every conclusion deduced from experiments _in vacuo_. "When the intense heat," says he, "produced by electricity, and the strong attractive powers of differently electrified surfaces, and the rapidity of the changes of state, are considered, it does not seem at all improbable, that the superficial particles of bodies, which, when detached by the repulsive power of heat, form vapour, may be likewise detached by electrical powers, and that they may produce luminous appearances in a vacuum free from all other matter, by the annihilation of their opposite electrical states." [76] "On the Existence of a Limit to Vaporization. By M. Faraday, F.R.S. Corresponding Member of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris." Phil. Trans. 1826. See also a more recent paper by the same Philosopher in the first number of the new Journal of the Royal Institution.