The passive of all kinds has been very fully investigated, and many new conclusions have been formed respecting it, which are of immediate importance… - Thomas Young

have enumerated, in a compendious and systematical form, the principal facts which have been discovered with respect to galvanic electricity; and I have fortunately been able to profit by Mr. Davy's most important experiments, which have lately been communicated to the , and which have already given to this branch of science a much greater perfection, and a far greater extent, than it before possessed.

The historical part of the work can scarcely be called new, but several of the circumstances, which are related, have escaped the notice of former writers on the history of the sciences.

With respect to the cohesion and of liquids, I have had the good fortune to anticipate Mr. Laplace in his late researches, and I have endeavoured to show, that my assumptions are more universally applicable to the facts, than those which that justly celebrated mathematician has employed.