Thus in the common experiments, where the vitreous or resinous ether is accumulated by art, metallic bodies have been esteemed the best conductors, and next to these water, and all other moist bodies; but it was lately discovered, that dry charcoal, recently burnt, was a more perfect conductor than metals; and it appears from the experiments discovered by Galvani, which have thence the name of Galvanism, that animal flesh, and particularly perhaps the nerves of animals, both which are composed of much carbon and water, are the most perfect conductors yet discovered; that is, that they give the least resistance to the junction of the spontaneous electric atmospheres, which exist round metallic bodies, and which differ very little in respect to the proportions of their vitreous and resinous ingredients. Thus also, though where the accumulated electricities are dense, as in charging a coated glass-jar, the glass, which intervenes, may be of considerable thickness, and may still become charged by the stronger attraction of the secondary electric ethers; but where the spontaneous adhesive electric atmospheres are employed to charge plates of air, as in the Galvanic pile, or probably to charge thin animal membranes or cuticles, as perhaps in the shock given by the torpedo or gymnotus, it seems necessary that the intervening nonconducting plate must be extremely thin, that it may become charged by the weaker attraction of these small quantities or difference of the spontaneous electric atmospheres; and in this circumstance only, I suppose, the shocks from the Galvanic pile, and from the torpedo and gymnotus, differ from those of the coated jar. 3. When atmospheres of electricity, which do not differ much in the quantity or proportion of their vitreous and resinous ethers, approach each other, they are not easily or rapidly united; but the predominant vitreous or resinous ether of one of them repels the similar ether of the opposed atmosphere, and attracts the contrary kind of ether. The slowness or difficulty with, which atmospheres, which differ but little in kind or in density, unite with each other, appears not only from the experiment of Mr. Canton above related, but also from the repeated smaller shocks, which may be taken from a charged coated jar after the first or principal discharge, if the conducting medium has not been quickly removed, as is also mentioned above.