in Law, signifies a longer course of proceedings than is needful to recover the thing sued for.

Circuit, also signifies the journey or progress which the judges take twice every year, through the several counties of England and Wales, to hold courts and administer justice, where recourse cannot be had to the king's courts at Westminster; hence England is divided into five circuits, viz., the Home circuit; Norfolk circuit; Midland circuit; Oxford circuit; Western circuit; and Northern circuit. In Wales there are but two circuits, North and South Wales: two judges are assigned by the king's commission to every circuit.

In Scotland, the judges of the supreme criminal court, or court of judicature, are divided into three separate courts, consisting of two judges each; and the kingdom into as many districts. In certain boroughs of every district, each of these courts by rotation is obliged to hold two courts in the year, in spring and autumn; which are called circuit-courts.

Electrical Circuit, denotes the course of the electric fluid from the charged surface of an electric body, to the opposite surface into which the discharge is made. Some of the first electricians apprehend, that the same particles of the electric fluid, which were thrown on one side of the charged glass, actually made the whole circuit of the intervening conductors, and arrived at the opposite side; whereas Dr Franklin's theory only requires, that the redundancy of electric matter on the charged surface should pass into the bodies forming that part of the circuit which is contiguous to it, driving forward that part of the fluid which they naturally possess; and that the deficiency of the exhausted surface should be supplied by the neighbouring conductors, which form the last part of the circuit. On this supposition, a vibrating motion is successively communicated through the whole length of the circuit. This circuit is always formed of the best conductors, let the length of it be ever so great. Many attempts were made, both in France and England, at an early period in the history of electricity, to ascertain the distance to which the electric shock might be carried, and the velocity of its motion. The French philosophers, at different times, made it to pass through a circuit of 900 toises, and of 2000 toises, or about two English miles and a half; and they discharged the Leyden phial through a basin of water, the surface of which was about an acre. And M. Mounier found, that, in passing through an iron wire of 950 toises in length, it did not spend a quarter CIRCUIT

Circuit of a second; and that its motion was instantaneous through a wire of 1310 feet. In 1747, Dr Watson, and other English philosophers, after many experiments of a similar kind, conveyed the electric matter through a circuit of four miles; and they concluded from this and another trial, that its velocity is instantaneous.