Scientific American Supplement, No. 392

we have a longitudinal neutrality produced in the same rod when placed magnetic west, the polarity in the latter case being transversal.

In all these cases we have a perfectly symmetrical arrangement, and I have not yet found a single case in well-annealed soft iron in which I could detect a heterogeneous arrangement, as supposed by Ampere, De la Rive, Weber, Wiedermann, and Maxwell.

We can only study neutrality with perfectly soft Swedish iron. Hard iron and steel retain previous magnetizations, and an apparent external neutrality would in most cases be the superposition of one magnetism upon another of equal external force in the opposite direction, as shown at B, Fig. 1. Perfectly soft iron we can easily free, by vibrations, from the slightest trace of previous magnetism, and study the neutrality produced under varying conditions.

[Illustration: FIG. 1.]

If we take a flat bar of soft iron, of 30 or more centimeters in length, and hold it vertically (giving while thus held a few torsions, vibra