The distance to which magnetism is communicated by electricity, and the fact of its taking place equally through conductors and non-conductors, are circumstances which, in the opinion of Davy, are unfavourable to the idea of the identity of electricity and magnetism.
Davy subsequently ascertained by experiment, that the magnetic result was proportional to the quantity of electricity passing through a given space; and this fact led him to believe, that a wire electrified by the common machine would not occasion a sensible effect; and this he found to be the case, on placing very small needles across a fine wire connected with a prime conductor of a powerful machine and the earth. But as a momentary exposure in a powerful electrical circuit was sufficient to give permanent polarity to steel, it appeared equally obvious, that needles placed transversely to a wire at the time that the electricity of a common Leyden battery was discharged through it, ought to become magnetic; and this he found was actually the fact, and according to precisely the same laws as in the Voltaic circuit; the needle _under_ the wire, the positive conductor being on the right hand, offering its north pole to the face of the operator, and the needle _above_, exhibiting the opposite polarity.
The facility with which experiments are made with the common Leyden battery, enabled him to ascertain various other important facts, respecting the communication of magnetism, which it would be inconsistent with the nature and limits of this work to particularize. I have merely offered a notice of the more prominent discoveries communicated by him in his first paper to the Royal Society, and which he concludes by observing, that "in consequence of the facts lately developed, a number of curious speculations cannot fail to present themselves to every philosophical mind; such as whether the magnetism of the earth may not be owing to its electricity, and the variation of the needle to the alterations in the electrical currents of the earth, in consequence of its motions, internal changes, or its relations to solar heat; and whether the luminous effects of the auroras at the poles are not shown, by these new facts, to depend on electricity. This is evident, that if strong electrical currents be supposed to follow the apparent course of the sun, the magnetism of the earth ought to be such as it is found to be."[75]