1793. JT. 40.] COUNT RUMFORD. 43 



animal electricity, and said he had sent off his paper for 

 the Royal Society about three weeks before, probably not 

 time enough for it to be read before the vacation. I thought 

 bis experiments proved that there is no particular animal 

 electricity, and that the animals serve only the purpose of 

 very delicate electrometers ; but they leave other circum- 

 stances unexplained. 



On his return to London Sir C. Blagden wrote on 

 November 21 to Sir Joseph Banks : 



From Italy I brought two papers by Count Rumford, one 

 on ' Coloured Shadows,' the other on a 'Method of Measuring 

 the Comparative Intensities of the Light Emitted by Lumi- 

 nous Bodies.' In the former he shows neatly enough that 

 the colours ascribed to these shadows depend entirely on 

 comparing them with light of another colour. The method 

 referred to in the second paper is that of the intensity of 

 the shadows produced by the different luminous bodies. 

 These two papers will furnish matter for nearly three 

 meetings of the Royal Society. 



Count Rumford had another serious illness in Naples 

 in the early part of 1794. He returned to Munich in 

 August. 



He left Munich for London in 1795. He had spent 

 the year after his return from Italy in comparative 

 quiet. He was unfit for public business and he chiefly 

 occupied himself by writing out the results that he 

 had obtained. He thus made a series of essays. 



In order to publish these in England and to meet 

 his daughter, who was about to come to him from 

 America, and to recover further his health, he obtained 

 leave of absence from the Elector of Bavaria. 



In his paper on Gunpowder in 1781 he said he 

 would make experiments on the strength of various 



