472 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 



A fine laboratory fitted with delicate and costly appar- 

 atus, skilled workmen at one's call, and unlimited capital 

 to draw upon, did not fall to the lot of the electrical dis- 

 coverer of Gray's time. There were no electrical shares 

 quoted on the world's exchanges in those days, and what- 

 ever the magnetizers may have gained, no one had ever 

 made a penny out of electricity, or even perceived channels 

 whereby profitably to lead other people to lose pounds. 

 Therefore, no one supplied Gray with means pecuniary or 

 otherwise for the prosecution of his work. But that did 

 not trouble him. There were his fishing-rods and his 

 canes, the kitchen poker and cabbages and pieces of brick; 

 hemp twine was cheap, and by getting along with these he 

 could economize sufficiently to acquire the more expensive 

 part of his apparatus, a little silk and a few glass tubes. 

 If a suspended boy was wanted, no doubt there were 

 plenty of the Grey Friars lads willing enough to undergo 

 the astonishing experiences which the old brother con- 

 trived for them. 



Up to this time no one (Von Guericke excepted, and he 

 forgotten) had thought to inquire whether the electric 

 virtue could be made to pass from one body to another. 

 This Gray did, and came to do so through the idea sug- 

 gesting itself that if Hauksbee's glass tube could com- 

 municate light to another object by its electric quality, 

 why could it not communicate the quality itself? in which 

 case the body receiving the virtue would have the same 

 property of attracting and repelling light bodies as the ex- 

 cited tube. It also struck him that if this could be done, 

 "the attractive virtue might be carried to bodies that were 

 many feet distant from the tube." 



He procures a glass tube about a yard long and a littl< 

 over an inch in diameter. To keep out the dust, he puts 

 corks in the ends an expedient which turns out to be the 

 quickest possible means of revealing exactly what he was 

 looking for. Now he rubs the tube in order to excite i' 

 electrically, and to his surprise he finds that feathers and 



