igobj ABBE— BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AS METEOROLOGIST. 123 



observation and that what we accept on the testimony of reHable 

 witnesses must be capable of being tested by actual experiment or 

 observation and by logical reasoning at any moment. He proposed 

 that his new society should consider a long list of subjects men- 

 tioned by him specifically. This list did not include the weather 

 or the atmosphere except by implication in the last paragraph, which 

 reads thus : '' and all phylosophical experiments that let light into 

 the nature of things, tend to increase the power of j\Ian over Matter 

 and multiply the conveniences or pleasures of life." (Smyth, vol. 

 2, p. 230.) 



As we delve into the great store of manuscripts relating to his 

 life that have been preserved for us by his own habitual carefulness, 

 we find new points of contact between him and modern ideas. His 

 long record as a patriot, as an ambassador, as a master of pure En- 

 glish, as an electrician, as a man of the world, as a devoted brother, 

 husband and father, has served to obscure some other equally promi- 

 nent features of his character and his activity. His brilliant dis- 

 covery of the identity between lightning and the ordinary electricity 

 of the electric machine was not a so-called stroke of genius, but 

 the inevitable result of his most persistent habit of thought and 

 study, namely the determination that every idea that should occur 

 to him of a philosophical nature should as soon as possible be tested 

 by experiment. Accordingly we find the following memorandum 

 in his daily note book, for November 7, 1749; after enumerating 

 several analogies between lightning and the ordinary electric flash 

 he adds : " The electric fluid is attracted by points ; we do not know 

 whether this property is in lightning ; but since they agree in all the 

 particulars wherein we can already compare them, is it not probable 

 that they agree likewise in this ? Let the experiment be made." 



This was in November, 1749, at Philadelphia, at the season when 

 lightning was rare, but he prepared to make the experiment as soon 

 as practicable, doing it quietly in order to avoid attracting public 

 attention, for a crowd was very apt to gather about him wherever he 

 appeared. He at first planned to use a pointed rod on a high build- 

 ing, — afterwards he thought of attaching this rod to a kite. His silk 

 kite had a pointed steel bar attached to the kite line, the latter was 

 insulated by a silken cord and a key was tied at the junction, so 



