Note 43 — STEPPES AND DESERTS.

p. 23.—“Awakened by the contact of moist dissimilar particles.”

In all parts of organic bodies dissimilar substances are in contact with each other: in all, solids are associated with fluids. Thus, wherever there is organization and life, there is also electric tension or the play of the voltaic pile, as the experiments of Nobili and Matteucci, and especially the latest admirable labours of Emil du Bois, teach us. The last named physicist has succeeded in “manifesting the presence of the electric muscular current in living and wholly uninjured animal bodies:” he shews that “the human body, through the medium of a copper wire, can cause a magnetic needle at a distance to be deflected at pleasure, first in one and then in the opposite direction.” (Untersuchungen über thierische Elektricität, von Emil du Bois-Reymond, 1848, Bd. i. S. xv.) I have witnessed these movements produced at pleasure, and have had the gratification of seeing thereby great and unexpected light thrown on phenomena to which I had laboriously and hopefully devoted several years of my youth.