We have been repeating the Galvanic experiments with success. Nicholson, by means of a hundred pieces of silver and zinc, has procured a visible spark. Cruickshank has revived oxidated metals in solution, by means of the nascent hydrogen produced from the decomposition of water by the shock; and both he and Carlisle have absolutely resolved water into oxygen and hydrogen by means of it, making use of silver and platina wires. An immense field of investigation seems opened by this discovery: may it be pursued so as to acquaint us with some of the laws of life!
You have, undoubtedly, heard of Herschel's discovery concerning the production of heat by invisible rays emitted from the sun. By placing one thermometer within the red rays, separated by a prism, and another beyond them, he found the temperature of the outside thermometer raised more than that of the inside one.
When I first heard of Mr. Tennant's discovery,[28] I was very much struck by an observation which you long ago made to me, on the fertility of the Cornish lands, in which there was decomposed, feltspar or serpentine.
Mr. Tennant spent a day here some time ago, when I mentioned your observation to him, but he could not give any solution of the phenomenon. Quere.—As lime and magnesia are probably both subservient to vegetation, only from supplying plants with carbonic acid, may not lime, when mingled with magnesia, in the process of vegetation, render it partially caustic, and thus enable it to destroy them?
Your observation on the scale of numbers, and the fact relative to it, are highly interesting. Reasoning on this subject would literally form the logic of generalization, or the application of one term to signify many terms, or many ideas, on which science ultimately depends. Quere.—How far have the first attempts at generalization arisen from accident, and how far from the resemblance between ideas?
Dr. Beddoes has always ridiculed the "Tractors," in common with all other reasonable men. He is about to publish a new work on the Nitrous Acid.
J. Wedgwood is returned, very little altered for the better. Coleridge is gone to reside in Cumberland; he was here the week before last, and spent much time with me, and often spoke of you with the greatest interest. Clayfield is at this moment chiefly engaged in commercial speculations. He has found a new mode of making soda, which there is every reason to believe will turn out profitable.
I hope some time in the autumn to see you, and to enjoy the well remembered pleasure of your conversation; in the mean while, I remain, with respects to your family,
Yours with sincere affection,
Humphry Davy.
In estimating the early genius of Davy, and his character as a philosopher, the style and matter of his "Researches" will afford us much assistance. The close philosophical reasoning,—the patient and penetrating industry,—the candid submission to every intimation of experiment, and the accuracy of manipulation, so remarkably displayed throughout this work, have been rarely equalled, and perhaps never surpassed.