VOL XXXI.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 4Q1 



yard long, and by Iiolding the end in one hand, and drawing it through my 

 other hand between my thumb and fingers, it would acquire an electricity, so 

 that if the hand were held near its lower end, it would be attracted by it at the 

 distance of 5 or 6 inches. 



After this I tried several other bodies; as, linen of several sorts, viz. Holland, 

 muslin, &c. and woollen, as of several sorts of cloth and other stuffs of the 

 same materials. From these I proceeded to paper, both white and brown, 

 finding them, after they had been well heated before rubbing, to emit copiously 

 their electric effluvia. The next body that I found the same property in, was 

 thin shavings of wood ; I have only as yet tried the fir shavings, which are 

 strongly electrical. The last three substances which I found to have the same 

 property, are leather, parchment, and those thin guts in which leaf-gold is 

 beaten. 



All these bodies will not only, by their electricity, be drawn to the hand, or 

 any other solid body that is near them ; but they will, as other electric bodies 

 do, draw all small bodies to them, and that to the distance sometimes of 8 or 

 ]0 inches. Heating them by the fire before rubbing very much increases their 

 force. 



There is another property in some of these bodies, which is common to glass, 

 that when they are rubbed in the dark, there is a light follows the fingers 

 through which they are drawn ; this holds both in silk and linen, but is strongest 

 in pieces of white pressing papers, which are much the same with card-paper ; 

 this not only yields a light as above, but when the fingers are held near it, there 

 proceeds a light from them with a crackling noise like that produced by a glass 

 tube, though not at so great a distance from the fingers. To perform this, the 

 paper, before rubbing, must be heated as hot as the fingers can well bear. 



A down feather being tied to the end of a fine thread of raw silk, and the 

 other end to a small stick, which was fixed to a foot, that it might stand upright 

 on the table ; there was taken a piece of brown paper, which by the foregoing 

 method was made to be strongly electrical, which being held near the feather, 

 it came to the paper, and I carried it wjth the same till it came near the perpen- 

 dicular of the stick ; then lifting up my hand till the paper was got beyond the 

 feather, the thread was extended and stood upright in the air, as if it had been 

 a piece of wire, though the feather was near an inch distant from the paper. 

 If the finger were held near the feather in this position, the greatest part of the 

 fibres next the paper would be repelled, when at the same time if a finger were 

 held to the fibres that were more remote from the paper, they would be 

 drawn by it. 



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