Page:Various Forces of Matter.djvu/120

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108
ELECTRICITY.

by drawing it gently through my hand. [The Lecturer repeated the experiment of exciting the shellac, and then removing the attractive power by drawing it through his hand.] Again you will see I can repeat this experiment with another substance; for if I take a glass rod and rub it with a piece of silk covered with what we call amalgam, look at the attraction which it has, how it draws the ball towards it; and then, as before, by quietly rubbing it through the hand, the attraction will be all removed again to come back by friction with this silk.

But now we come to another fact. I will take this piece of shellac, and make it attractive by friction; and remember that whenever we get an attraction of gravity, chemical affinity, adhesion, or electricity (as in this case), the body which attracts is attracted also, and just as much as that ball was attracted by the shellac, the shellac was attracted by the ball. Now I will suspend this piece of excited shellac in a little paper stirrup, in this way (fig. 33), in order to make it move easily, and I will take another piece of shellac, and after rubbing it with flannel, will bring them near together: you will think that they ought to attract each