Scientijic Societies. 21 



the parabola of a comet and the fall of a rose leaf are both eflFects 

 of one and llie same cause, and that 



" The very law wliich moulds a tear 

 And keeps it rolling in its source, 

 The same preserves the world its sphere 

 And guides the planets in their course." 



Yet all this immense discovery lay in the significance possessed 

 by the fall of an apple to a young man ot twenty-four driven from 

 Cambridge and from his books by the plague, and so having 

 abundant leisure to sit thinking in the orchard of his house. 

 Millions of jjcople had seen apples fall, but that youth first saw 

 what the falling of an apple tueotit. And he saw it as he sat 

 apparently idle in his orchard, with no books to read — apparently 

 idle, but in reality in busy thought. Let me pause here for a 

 moment to say that we all think, and notice, and look too little.. 

 We are for ever rushing to books and trying to learn from them, 

 instead of relying sufficiently, as we ought to do, on the myriads 

 of lessons which must be deduced from the action of our own 

 senses, by the energising activity of our own independent minds. 

 The moments when a man is apparently sitting idle and doing 

 nothing may be idle moments, and they may on the other hand, 

 if his mind be rightly trained, be the best, the brightest, and ;he 

 busiest moments of his life. 



Again, how many millions had been awestruck at the lightning 

 shining from the East even unto the West, without suspecting that 

 it was ideiitical with, was the very same thing as, the fluid which 

 lay hid in the dewdrop, and which might be stroked out of a cat's 

 back, or brushed in abundant sparks out of one's own hair. It 

 remained for an American working man, Benjamin Franklin, to 

 prove it, and to prove it with no more exalted mechanism than a 

 boy's kite with its hempen string, from which hung a small key, 

 and to which was attached as a non-conductor a piece of silken 

 cord. On June 15, 1755, during a thunderstorm, he let the kite 

 soar towards the dark clouds, and just as he was beginning to 

 despair of his experiment, "suddenly saw the hempen fibres 

 bristling from the string, heard a crackling noise, presented his 

 knuckle to the key, and received the electric spark." Overcome 

 by his feelings at the consummation of this great discovery, " I 

 heaved," he said, " a deep sigh, and conscious of an immortal 

 name, felt that I could have been qontent had that moment been 

 my last." How easily it might have been his last is shown by the 

 fact, that when Professor Richman a few months afterwards was 

 repeating this experiment at St. Petersburg, a globe of fire flashed 

 from the conducting rod to his forehead and killed him on the spot. 



