tion is essentially the action of one current
upon another, or of one element of a current upon another element of the
same current. To avoid any such conclusion I must explain more distinctly
my meaning. If an endless wire be taken, we have the means of generating a
current in it which shall run round the circuit without adding any
electricity to what was previously in the wire. As far as we can judge, the
electricity which appears as a current is the same as that which before was
quiescent in the wire; and though we cannot as yet point out the essential
condition of difference of the electricity at such times, we can easily
recognize the two states. Now when a current acts by induction upon
conducting matter lateral to it, it probably acts upon the electricity in
that conducting matter whether it be in the form of a _current_ or
_quiescent_, in the one case increasing or diminishing the current
according to its direction, in the other producing a current, and the
_amount_ of the inductive action is probably the same in both cases. Hence,
to say that the action of induction depended upon the mutual relation of
two or more currents, would, according to the restricted sense in which the
term current is understood at present (283. 517. 667.), be an error.

1111. Several of the effects, as, for instances, those with helices(1066.),
with according or counter currents (1097. 1098.), and those on the
production of lateral currents (1090.), appeared to indicate that a current
could produce an effect of induction in a neighbouring wire more readily
than in its own carrying wire, in which case it might be expected that some
variation of result would be produced if a bundle of wires were used as a
conductor instead of a single wire. In consequence the following
experiments were made. A copper wire one twenty-third of an inch in
diameter was cut into lengths of five feet each, and six of these being
laid side by side in one bundle, had their opposite extremities soldered to
two terminal pieces of copper. This arrangement could be used as a
discharging wire, but the general current could be divided into six
parallel streams, which might be brought close together, or, by the
separation of the wires, be taken more or less out of each other's
influence. A somewhat brighter spark was, I think, obtained on breaking
contact when the six wires were close together than when held asunder.

1112. Another bundle, containing twenty of these wir