such different substances as acids, alkalies, or water; charcoal, emery, ashes, or glass; or merely heated, is sufficient to negative such an opinion. Neither does it depend upon the spongy and porous, or upon the compact and burnished, or upon the massive or the attenuated state of the metal, for in any of these states it may be rendered effective, or its action may be taken away. The only essential condition appears to be a perfectly clean and metallic surface, for whenever that is present the platina acts, whatever its form and condition in other respects may be; and though variations in the latter points will very much affect the rapidity, and therefore the visible appearances and secondary effects, of the action, i.e. the ignition of the metal and the inflammation of the gases, they, even in their most favourable state, cannot produce any effect unless the condition of a clean, pure, metallic surface be also fulfilled.
354. The effect is evidently produced by most, if not all, solid bodies, weakly perhaps by many of them, but rising to a high degree in platina. Dulong and Thenard have very philosophically extended our knowledge of the property to its possession by all the metals, and by earths, glass, stones, etc. (347); and every idea of its being a known and recognised electric action is in this way removed.
355. All the phenomena connected with this subject press upon my mind the conviction that the effects in question are entirely incidental and of a secondary nature; that they are dependent upon the natural conditions of gaseous elasticity, combined with the exertion of that attractive force possessed by many bodies, especially those which are solid, in an eminent degree, and probably belonging to all; by which they are drawn into association more or less close, without at the same time undergoing chemical combination, though often assuming the condition of adhesion; and which occasionally leads, under very favourable circumstances, as in the present instance, to the combination of bodies simultaneously subjected to this attraction. I am prepared myself to admit (and probably many others are of the same opinion), both with respect to the attraction of aggregation and of chemical affinity, that the sphere of action of particles extends beyond those other particles with which they are immediately and evidently in union (259), and in many cases produces effects rising into considerable importance: and I think that this kind of attraction is a determining cause of Dobereiner's effect, and of the many others of a similar nature.
