556 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 



with which it was read by that philosopher and his col- 

 leagues is plainly shown by the contents of the next letter 

 which Collinson received. The Americans now saw 

 that they were fully as far advanced as the British elec- 

 tricians, and that each party was as likely to make im- 

 portant discoveries as the other. Franklin had recognized 

 this fact in his preceding letter, wherein he stated that the 

 rapidity of the progress in England half discouraged him 

 from writing further on the subject, lest his communica- 

 tions should contain nothing new or worth reading. The 

 news in Watson's paper that Dr. Bevis had already devised 

 the pane of glass coated with sheet metal as a substitute 

 for the jar, is, therefore, something of a disappointment; 

 and Franklin even excuses himself for mentioning it, 

 although he thought to have communicated it as a novelty 

 since " we tried the experiment differently, drew different 

 consequences from it, and as far as we know, have carried 

 it farther." 



There seems to be no reason for this diffidence on 

 Franklin's part. It does not appear certain that Bevis 7 

 invention antedated his own on the contrary, the multi- 

 plicity of Franklin's experiments go to show that he may 

 well have used the coated glass before Bevis. But the 

 American colonist of those days had a respect for the 

 mother country that was controlling, and which made it 

 almost instinctive for him to assume that knowledge 

 moved westward, and not in the reverse direction. 



Franklin's letter of 1748, in point of historical interest, 

 is of the highest importance. Kinnersley's discovery that 

 the Leyden jar can be electrified as strongly by sparks de- 

 livered to the outside as to the inside, begins it; so that it 

 opens with an assertion than which nothing could be 

 more disconcerting to the European electricians who still 

 persisted in the belief that the electrical fire entered the 

 water within the jar, and became somehow entangled 

 there. Franklin, following, shows how, if the inside of 

 one insulated jar be connected to the outside of another, an 



