538 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 



In the year 1746, while revisiting Boston, Franklin met 

 there a Doctor Spence, lately arrived from Scotland, who 

 exhibited to him some crude electrical experiments. 

 Spence' s apparatus was meagre, and his skill small; but 

 the subject was entirely a new one to Franklin, and it sur- 

 prised and delighted him. 



Meanwhile the circulating library which he had estab- 

 lished several years before had attained the dignity of a 

 corporation under a charter granted, in 1742, by John 

 Penn, Thomas Penn and Richard Penn, "absolute Pro- 

 prietaries of the Province of Pennsylvania and the counties 

 of Newcastle, Kent and Sussex upon the Delaware," and 

 was known as the Library Company of Philadelphia. 1 As 

 a matter of course, this institution drew its supply of books 

 from England for colonial publications were few and far 

 between; and it was especially fortunate in possessing in 

 London, rather as its benefactor and friend than as its 

 agent, Peter Collinson, a merchant having extensive busi- 

 ness relations with the American colonies, and a mem- 

 ber of the Royal Society. Collinson was in the habit of 

 gathering, not only books, but news and transmitting the 

 same to the Library Company; and occasionally the mem- 

 bers of the latter, in return, would send to Collinson ac- 

 counts of remarkable natural events occurring in their 

 vicinity. It was a common custom in those days for for- 

 eigners and non-members of the Royal Society to report 

 such happenings or the results of their own new experi- 

 ments to members, so that the latter might offer them to 

 the Society, which, if it approved, caused the accounts to 

 be published in the official transactions. In this way 

 for instance, Joseph Breintnall, a member of the Library 

 Company, communicated through Collinson to the Royal 

 Society, under date of Feb. 10, 1746, his experiences fol- 

 lowing a rattlesnake bite. Collinson himself was a botan- 

 ist of high reputation. Through him a system of exchange 



1 A catalogue of the books belonging to the Library Company of Phila. 

 1769. 



