He pursued this line of research for nearly thirty years at Fyne Court, where his electrical-room and laboratory were on an enormous scale: the apparatus had cost some thousands of pounds, and the house was nearly full of furnaces. He carried an insulated wire above the tops of the trees around his house to the length of a mile and a quarter, afterwards shortened to 1800 feet. By this wire, which was brought into connection with the apparatus in a chamber, he was enabled to see continually the changes in the state of the atmosphere, and could use the fluid so collected for a variety of purposes. In 1816, at a meeting of country gentlemen, he prophesied that, “by means of electrical agency, we shall be able to communicate our thoughts simultaneously with the uttermost ends of the earth.” Still, though he foresaw the powers of the medium, he did not make any experiments in that direction, but confined himself to the endeavour to produce crystals of various kinds. He ultimately obtained forty-one mineral crystals, or minerals uncrystallised, in the form in which they are produced by nature, including one sub-sulphate of copper—an entirely new mineral, neither found in nature nor formed by art previously. His belief was that even diamonds might be produced in this way.
Mr. Crosse worked alone in his retreat until 1836, when, attending the meeting of the British Association at Bristol, he was induced to explain his experiments, for which he was highly complimented by Dr. Buckland, Dr. Dalton, Professor Sedgwick, and others.[51]
Shortly after Mr. Crosse’s return to Fyne Court, while pursuing his experiments for forming crystals from a highly caustic solution out of contact with atmospheric air, he was greatly surprised by the appearance of an insect. Black flint, burnt to redness and reduced to powder, was mixed with carbonate of potash, and exposed to a strong heat for fifteen minutes; and the mixture was poured into a black-lead crucible in an air furnace. It was reduced to powder while warm, mixed with boiling water, kept boiling for some minutes, and then hydrochloric acid was added to supersaturation. After being exposed to voltaic action for twenty-six days, a perfect insect of the Acari tribe made its appearance, and in the course of a few weeks about a hundred more. The experiment was repeated in other chemical fluids with the like results; and Mr. Weeks of Sandwich afterwards produced the Acari inferrocyanerret of potassium. The Acarus of Mr. Crosse was found to contribute a new species of that genus, nearly approaching the Acari found in cheese and flour, or more nearly, Hermann’s Acarus dimidiatus.
This discovery occasioned great excitement. The possibility was denied, though Mr. Faraday is said to have stated in the same year that he had seen similar appearances in his own electrical experiments. Mr. Crosse was now accused of impiety and aiming at creation, to which attacks he thus replied:
As to the appearance of the acari under long-continued electrical action, I have never in thought, word, or deed given any one a right to suppose that I considered them as a creation, or even as a formation, from inorganic matter. To create is to form a something out of a nothing. To annihilate is to reduce that something to a nothing. Both of these, of course, can only be the attributes of the Almighty. In fact, I can assure you most sacredly that I have never dreamed of any theory sufficient to account for their appearance. I confess that I was not a little surprised, and am so still, and quite as much as I was when the acari made their first appearance. Again, I have never claimed any merit as attached to these experiments. It was a matter of chance; I was looking for silicious formations, and animal matter appeared instead.
These Acari, if removed from their birthplace, lived and propagated; but uniformly died on the first recurrence of frost, and were entirely destroyed if they fell back into the fluid whence they arose.
One of Mr. Crosse’s visitors thus describes the vast electrical room at Fyne Court:
Here was an immense number of jars and gallipots, containing fluids on which electricity was operating for the production of crystals. But you are startled in the midst of your observations by the smart crackling sound that attends the passage of the electrical spark; you hear also the rumbling of distant thunder. The rain is already plashing in great drops against the glass, and the sound of the passing sparks continues to startle your ear; you see at the window a huge brass conductor, with a discharging rod near it passing into the floor, and from the one knob to the other sparks are leaping with increasing rapidity and noise, every one of which would kill twenty men at one blow, if they were linked together hand in hand and the spark sent through the circle. From this conductor wires pass off without the window, and the electric fluid is conducted harmlessly away. Mr. Crosse approached the instrument as boldly as if the flowing stream of fire were a harmless spark. Armed with his insulated rod, he sent it into his batteries: having charged them, he showed how wire was melted, dissipated in a moment, by its passage; how metals—silver, gold, and tin—were inflamed and burnt like paper, only with most brilliant hues. He showed you a mimic aurora and a falling-star, and so proved to you the cause of those beautiful phenomena.
Mr. Crosse appears to have produced in all “about 200 varieties of minerals, exactly resembling in all respects similar ones found in nature.” He tried also a new plan of extracting gold from its ores by an electrical process, which succeeded, but was too expensive for common use. He was in the habit of saying that he could, like Archimedes, move the world “if he were able to construct a battery at once cheap, powerful, and durable.” His process of extracting metals from their ores has been patented. Among his other useful applications of electricity are the purifying by its means of brackish or sea-water, and the improving bad wine and brandy. He agreed with Mr. Quekett in thinking that it is by electrical action that silica and other mineral substances are carried into and assimilated by plants. Negative electricity Mr. Crosse found favourable to no plants except fungi; and positive electricity he ascertained to be injurious to fungi, but favourable to every thing else.
Mr. Crosse died in 1855. His widow has published a very interesting volume of Memorials of the ingenious experimenter, from which we select the following: