“Arrangements of metals and fluids are the common means by which we evolve this wonderful power, in our laboratories; and it would seem that nothing more than juxta-position, in a certain order, is necessary to the effect. Even substances apparently dry and inert, with respect to each other, will produce a permanent, and in proportion to the means employed, a powerful effect, as in the columns of De Luc and Zamboui. It would seem indeed that metals and fluids are not _necessary_ to the effect. Arrangements of almost any substances that are of different natures, will cause the evolution of this power. Whoever has witnessed the overwhelming brilliancy and intense energy of the great galvanic combinations, especially the deflagrator of Dr. Hare, and considers how very trifling, in extent, are our largest combinations of apparatus, compared with those natural arrangements of earths, salts, metals, and fluids, which we know to exist in the earth, in circumstances similar to those which, in our laboratories, are effectual in causing this power to appear, will not be slow to believe that it may be in the earth perpetually evolved, and perpetually renewed; and now mitigated, suppressed, or revived, according to circumstances influencing the particular state of things at particular places. “In our laboratories we see emanating from this source, intense light, irresistible heat, magnetism in great energy, and above all, a decomposing power, which commands equally all the elements, and the proximate principles in all their combinations. “Sir Humphrey Davy, after discovering that the supporters of combustion and the acids, were all evolved at the positive pole, and the combustibles and metals, and their oxidated products, at the negative--proved that even the firmest rocks and stones could not resist this power; their immediate principles and elements being separated by its energy. The decomposition of the alkalies, earths, and other metallic oxides being a direct and now familiar effect of voltaic energy--their metals being set at liberty, and being combustible both in air and water--elastic agents produced by this power, and rarified by heat, being also attendant on these decompositions, it would seem that the first principles are fully established by experiment, and that nothing is hypothetical, but the application to the phenomena of earthquakes and volcanos.”