14 Baron Cuvier's Historical Eloge of 



a nature that few are capable of executing them ; hence it very 

 seldom happens, that he who has been once invested with them, 

 is not re-elected so long as he consents to be so. A first choice 

 is therefore a great affair in the learned world ; and when it is 

 disputed, it is with great keenness. 



At the period of which we speak, the discussions that took 

 place had their asperity increased by a singular, I would almost 

 venture to say a ridiculous incident. The natural philosophers 

 of the Royal Society having been consulted about the form that 

 should be given to a lightning-rod that was to be placed upon 

 some public building, had almost unanimously proposed to 

 have it terminated in a point. A single individual among them 

 of the name of Wilson, took it into his head to maintain that it 

 should terminate in a round knob, and he delivered an incom- 

 prehensible harangue in support of this paradox. The thing 

 was so clear, that, in any other country, or at any other time, 

 people would not have listened to him, and the conductor would 

 have been made as all others had hitherto been made. But 

 England was then in the hottest part of her quarrel with her 

 American colonies, and it was Franklin who had discovered 

 the power which points have of drawing off lightning. A ques- 

 tion of natural philosophy therefore became a question of politics. 

 It was carried on not before learned men, but before party men. 

 It was only the friends of the insurgents, it was said, that could 

 be for points, and whoever did not support the knobs, was evi- 

 dently without affection for the mother country. As is usual the 

 multitude, and even the higher classes, were divided, before hav- 

 ing examined the matter, and Wilson found protectors, just as 

 protectors would have been found against the theorem of Py- 

 thagoras, if geometry had ever become an affair of party. It is 

 even asserted that an august personage, on every other occa- 

 sion the generous and enlightened friend of science, had, on (his 

 occasion, the weakness to make himself a solicitor, and the mis- 

 fortune to plead against the points. He spoke to the then pre- 

 sident. Sir John Pringle, a man of sound judgment and of 

 elevated character. Pringle, it is said, respectfully represented, 

 that the prerogatives of the President of the Royal Society did 

 not go so far as to change the laws of nature. He might have 

 added, that, if it be honourable for princes, not only to protect 



