464 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 



growing settlement, New York, is eyeing him suspiciously 

 as an accomplice of her most picturesque pirate, Captain 

 Kidd. 



Mr. Hauksbee, however, bending over his globe, is 

 uttering new, and even more fervid expressions of amaze- 

 ment and admiration. His lights are becoming fantastic, 

 branching here and there, dashing against the crystal 

 walls, while his notions are being turned so completely 

 around, that he is beginning to believe that this illumina- 

 tion and that given by the mercury are, after all, very much 

 alike. Certainly both seem to come from glass, and, as he 

 says, "one might conjecture with some probability that the 



HAUKSBEE' S ELECTRIC GLOW. 1 



light produced proceeds from some quality in the glass 

 (upon such as friction or motion given it), and not from 

 the mercury, upon any other account than only as does a 

 proper body, which by beating or rubbing on the glass, 

 produces the light." 



Observe how easy it is after the event to foresee conclu- 



1 Reproduced in fac simile from s'Gravesande's Elements of Natural 

 Philosophy, 4th ed., 1731. There is no picture of the electric glow given 

 in either of the two editions of Hauksbee's treatise. s'Gravesande's work 

 from which Dr. Desaguiliers made the translation above noted, appears 

 to have been published not long after Hauksbee's second edition, so that 

 the present illustration is a fairly near contemporary representation of 

 the phenomenon. 



