ELECTRICITY.
No branch of science is more capable of affording amusement, combined with instruction, than electricity, and there are few sciences in which the experiments are more easily performed. We would therefore especially recommend it to our young friends.
The term electricity is derived from the Greek word electron, signifying amber, because electrical attraction was first discovered from its being noticed that when amber was rubbed into a certain degree of warmth, it had the power of attracting small bodies to itself.
Electricity therefore primarily treats of the phenomena and effects produced by the friction or rubbing together of certain bodies called electrics. These consist of glass, amber, resinous matters, silks, hair, wool, feathers, various vegetable substances, and atmospheric air, and the electricity so obtained is usually called Frictional Electricity, to distinguish it from that produced by chemical action, and called Voltaic Electricity.
SIMPLE MEANS OF PRODUCING ELECTRICITY.
To show the nature of electrical action, rub a piece of sealing-wax or amber upon the coat-sleeve, and it will attract light bodies, such as straws or small pieces of paper. If a clean glass tube be rubbed several times through a silken or leather cloth, and presented to any small substances, it will immediately attract and then repel them; and if a poker suspended by a dry silk string be presented to its upper end, then the lower end of the poker will exhibit the same phenomena as the tube itself, which shows that the opposite electrical condition may be induced upon other bodies by the mere neighbourhood and approach of another electrified body, and the effect so produced is called induced electricity.
