As no conductors of electricity are absolutely perfect, there must be produced a certain accumulation of vitreous ether on one side of each charged plate of the Galvanic pile, and of resinous ether on the other side of it, before the discharge takes place, even though the conducting medium be in apparent contact. When the discharge does take place, the whole of the accumulated electricity explodes and vanishes; and then an instant of time is required for the silver and zinc again to attract from the air, or other bodies in their vicinity, their spontaneous natural atmospheres, and then another discharge ensues; and so repeatedly and perpetually till the surface of one of the metallic plates becomes so much oxydated or calcined, that it ceases to act. Hence a perpetual motion may be said to be produced, with an incessant decomposition of water into the two gasses of oxygen and hydrogen; which must probably be constantly proceeding on all moist Surfaces, where a chain of electric conductors exists, surrounded with different proportions of the two electric ethers. Whence the ceaseless liberation of oxygen from the water has oxydated or calcined the ores of metals near the surface of the earth, as of manganese, of zinc into lapis calaminaris, of iron into various ochres, and other calciform ores. From this source also the corrosion of some metals may be traced, when they are immersed in water in the vicinity of each other, as when the copper sheathing of ships was held on by iron nails. And hence another great operation of nature is probably produced, I mean the restoration of oxygen to the atmosphere from the surface of the earth in dewy mornings, as well as from the perspiration of vegetable leaves; which atmospheric oxygen is hourly destructible by the respiration of animals and plants, by combustion, and by other oxydations.