such circumstances, be more powerful, and, consequently, more hurtful. When the worts are sound and sweet, the currents are proportionately feeble; but they never can be absent so long as metallic combinations are used in the brewery: even when most feeble, they constitute a force[1] superadded to, or giving direction to the chemical affinities engaged in the fermenting process, and they must constantly operate as disturbing causes, increasing or modifying a process, the success and perfection of which depends on its being permitted to go on to its completion, uninfluenced by any force save its own intestine affinities. It is now an established law, incontestibly proved by the experiments of Faraday, Daniell, and other philosophers, that the electro-chemical action of a current of electricity is always definite, and directly proportionate to the absolute quantity of electricity which circulates; and however feeble such a current may be, it must, if it at all exists, act electro-chemically.
We have already shown how impossible it is to avoid galvanic currents, if metals are used; but common electricity, circulating in currents, acts electro-chemically, as well as galvanism; and we may conceive, when electro-currents are slowly descending to the earth from superincumbent clouds, that they must, by the extent and conducting power
- ↑ See "Faraday’s Experimental Researches on Electricity," vol. i. p. 148., par. 518.
