ROBERT BOYLE'S EXPERIMENTS. 423 



seemed the more strange because so great a multitude of 

 hair would not have been easily attracted by an ordinary 

 electrical body that had not been considerably large or ex- 

 traordinarily vigorous. This repeated observation put me 

 upon inquiring of some other young ladies whether they 

 had observed any such like thing; but I found little satis- 

 faction to my question, except from one of them eminent 

 for being ingenious, who told me that sometimes she had 

 met with these troublesome locks, but that all she could 

 tell me of the circumstances which I would have been 

 in form' d about was that they seem'd to her to flye most to 

 her cheeks when they had been put into a somewhat stiff 

 curie, and when the weather was frosty. " 



And her observation was right. The stiff curling of the 

 hair had electrified it, and for this the frosty weather 

 offered the best of conditions. History was repeating 

 itself. Ages before, an unknown Phoenician woman had 

 seen her whirling amber spindle pick up the leaves and 

 chaff from the ground. Now an unknown Englishwoman 

 saw the same strange attraction, excited by her own light 

 locks, move the hair. And the learned philosopher of the 

 1 7th century to whom she told it first doubted it, and 

 ultimately did not understand what he saw any better 

 than did perhaps the Phoenician wise men five thousand 

 years before.. In fact, man has never put proper faith and 

 credit in woman's discoveries since he accepted Eve's 

 apple. 



As Boyle, with all his ingenuity, could make nothing^ 

 of the problem, he took refuge in the decrepit mediaeval 

 theory that the occurrence was due to the " effects of un- 

 heeded and, as it were, fortuitous causes," which, of course, 

 as an explanation, is exceeded in logical absurdity only by 

 that which attempts to elucidate an unknown matter by 

 giving an entirely new name to it. One is apt to wonder 

 why he did not attack the difficulty with something of the 

 same enthusiasm and experimental skill which he brought 

 to bear upon his chemical researches. Perhaps the reason 



