450 Linnean Society. 
important. Not so much because the gunpowder always ig- 
nited in these experiments (for it is possible that with longer 
and stouter wire, and a smaller charge, the ignition might 
not take place) ; but because, if it could be proved by experi- 
ment that the electric fluid would, by intervening capacious 
good conductors, ignite gunpowder at the negative, and not 
at the positive side of the moistened thread, such experiment 
would prove to demonstration the truth of the Franklinian 
hypothesis. 
I am well convinced that if the electric fluid ever passed 
the gunpowder without interruption, the latter could not be 
ignited by any recoil of the fluid into the jar from the inter- 
rupting moistened thread; because, if ever it passed through 
the gunpowder with violence, it would scatter, or blow the 
latter substance away, so that none would remain in the cir- 
cuit to be ignited at the time of the fluid’s return. 
Several experiments on the ignition of gunpowder by the 
electric fluid were exhibited, and demonstrated on the fore- 
going principles, in a lecture which I had the honour to de- 
liver before the members of the Western Literary and Scien- 
tific Institution, on Monday evening last (May sth) in the 
Concert Room, King’s Theatre, Haymarket. In one experi- 
ment the gunpowder was ignited at one extremity of the moist- 
ened thread; and in another experiment four guns were fired 
in the same circuit. I have frequently fired six guns by one 
discharge of a jar; and so instantaneous is the ignition at the 
several guns, that their united reports appear like the report 
of one gun only. ; 
I am at present engaged in other experiments on this branch 
of electricity, and shall not fail to communicate to the public 
the results of such as appear worthy of notice. 
[ am, sir, your’s faithfully, 
~ Artillery Place, Woolwich, W. STURGEON. 
May 15, 1826. f 
LXVI. Proceedings of Learned Societies. 
LINNZZXAN SOCIETY. 
June 6.— PQ EAD a paper by the Rev. Lansdown Guilding, 
F.L.S., On a new Genus of Insects named 
Oiketicus. ‘These insects exhibit a singular peculiarity in the 
sponsalia. The female never leaves the pupa-case. They 
seem to be allied to the genus Psyche, and their ceconomy 
serves to illustrate the mode of propagation in this last genus, 
which has been asserted to be without any sexual intercourse. 
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