These experiments with eight and with fifteen jars were repeated several
times alternately with the same results.

365. Other experiments were then made, in which all the battery was used,
and its charge (being fifty turns of the machine,) sent through the
galvanometer: but it was modified by being passed sometimes through a mere
wet thread, sometimes through thirty-eight inches of thin string wetted by
distilled water, and sometimes through a string of twelve times the
thickness, only twelve inches in length, and soaked in dilute acid (298.).
With the thick string the charge passed at once; with the thin string it
occupied a sensible time, and with the thread it required two or three
seconds before the electrometer fell entirely down. The current therefore
must have varied extremely in intensity in these different cases, and yet
the deflection of the needle was sensibly the same in all of them. If any
difference occurred, it was that the thin string and thread caused greatest
deflection; and if there is any lateral transmission, as M. Colladon says,
through the silk in the galvanometer coil, it ought to have been so,
because then the intensity is lower and the lateral transmission less.

366. Hence it would appear that _if the same absolute quantity of
electricity pass through the galvanometer, whatever may be its intensity,
the dejecting force upon the magnetic needle is the same._

367. The battery of fifteen jars was then charged by sixty revolutions of
the machine, and discharged, as before, through the galvanometer. The
deflection of the needle was now as nearly as possible to the eleventh
division, but the graduation was not accurate enough for me to assert that
the arc was exactly double the former arc; to the eye it appeared to be so.
The probability is, that _the deflecting force of an electric current is
directly proportional to the absolute quantity of electricity passed_, at