blowing of personal trumpets, it is not easy to keep one's head clear,
and mistakes may be made which will cause disappointment to many and
retard the progress of electrical science. We confidently expect that
electricity will prove a potent agent by and by in the hands of the
speculator for extracting gold from the pockets of the public, and we
write now to warn our readers in time, and to endeavor to clear the air
of some of the mists with which it is obscured. There is, no doubt,
a great future before electricity; but it is equally certain that
electricity can never do many things which the half informed may be
readily made to believe it will do. We propose here to say enough
on this point to enlighten our readers, without troubling them with
perplexing problems and speculations.

No one at this moment knows what electricity is; but for our present
purpose we may regard it as a fluid, non-elastic, and without weight,
and universally diffused through the universe. To judge by recently
published statements, a large section of the reading public are taught
that this fluid is a source of power, and that it may be made to do the
work of coal. This is a delusion. So long as electricity remains in what
we may call a normal state of repose, it is inert. Before _we can get
any work out of electricity a somewhat greater amount of work must be
done upon it_. If this fundamental and most important truth be kept in
view it will not be easy to make a grave mistake in estimating the value
of any of the numerous schemes for making electricity do work which will
ere long be brought before the public. To render our meaning clearer,
we may explain that in producing the electric light, for instance, a
certain quantity of electricity passes in through one wire to the lamp,
and precisely the same quantity passes out through the other wire, and
on to the earth or return wire completing the circuit. Not only is the
quantity the same, the velocity is also unchanged. But in going through