368 NOTES — ORIGINAL AND SELECTED. 



driest areas relative to the average, and probably the driest 

 absolutely for the year, seem to have been in Norfolk and in a 

 narrow strip running from south of Leicester through Lincoln 

 to Hull. Here the excess was under 10 per cent." Dr. Mill 

 states that " Over the British Isles as a whole the rainfall was 

 certainly considerably more than 25 per cent, above the average, 

 and England, Scotland, and Ireland differed little in the amount 

 of the excess." 



At Shoeburyness, the only Essex station mentioned, outside 

 the London district, the rainfall was 29*52 in., the average from 

 8870 to 8899 having been 89*75 ^^- Within the London district 

 the rainfall at Leyton (Lea-bridge road) in 1903 was 36*64 in. ; 

 at Greenwich Observatory 3*54 in. ; at Camden Square 388*0 in. ;. 

 and at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Kensington, 42*37 in. — 

 T.V.H. 



MISCELLANEA. 



An Early Electrical Experiment in Essex. — The follow- 

 ing incident in the life of Benjamin Wilson, F.R.S., the celebrated 

 portrait-painter, father of General Sir Robert Wilson, may be 

 of interest^: — " In 1747 Dr. Franklin published his discovery of 

 the identity of lightning with electricity. Wilson's attention 

 was immediately awakened. On the occurrence of the first 

 succeeding thunderstorm he happened to be at the house of a 

 friend near Chelmsford, in Essex, and at the moment was acting, 

 with others, one of Shakespeare's plays. He was playixig the 

 part of Henry IV. when the storm came on, and running out in 

 his royal robes he extemporised an apparatus to test the 

 discovery — a curtain -rod inserted in a clean, dry quart bottle, 

 with a pin (or needle) fastened to it at the other end. The bottle 

 he held in his hand as he stood upon the bowling-green, and the 

 fluid was collected in the rod so that sparks were drawn from it 

 by himself and all the rest. On the same day the same effects 

 were observed by Mr. Canton in London, and this storm was 

 the first occasion of the experiment being tried in England." 



I Lije of General Sir Robert Wilson, by the Rev. Herbert Randolph. 1862, Vol. i, p. 11. 



END OF VOLUME XIII. 



