VOL. XXXIX.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. Ill 



in experiments 1 and 2, will make revolutions round it, but slower and nearer 

 to it, than when it is placed on a cake of rosin, or within a glass hoop. 



Remarks. — Mr. Gray had not yet found that these experiments would succeed, 

 if the thread, by which the light body was suspended, was supported by any 

 other thing than a human hand; but he imagined it might happen the same, if 

 the thread should be supported or fastened to any animal substance whatever; 

 and he intended to have tried the foot of a chicken, a piece of raw flesh, or 

 the like. 



He thought to explain the foregoing particular, by the following odd pheno- 

 menon, of which he asserted he was very certain, having often observed it, 

 viz. if a man, resting his elbows on his knees, places his hands at some small 

 distance from each other, they will gradually accede to each other, without any 

 will or intention of the man to bring them together; and they will again recede 

 of themselves. In like manner, the hand will be attracted by the body ; or the 

 face of a man, if he stand near a wall, will be attracted to the wall, and be 

 again repelled by it. 



He told the Doctor, he had thought of these experiments only a very short 

 time before his falling sick; that he had not yet tried them with variety of 

 bodies, but that from what he had already seen of them, which struck him with 

 new surprise every time he repeated them, he hoped, if God would spare his 

 life but a little longer, he should, from what these phaenomena point out, bring 

 his electrical experiments to the greatest perfection ; and he did not doubt but 

 in a short time to be able to astonish the world with a new sort of planetarium 

 never before thought of, and that from these experiments might be established 

 a certain theory for accounting for the motions of the grand planetarium of the 

 universe. 



In trying these experiments since Mr. Gray's death, the Doctor found that 

 the small light body will make revolutions round a body of various shapes and 

 substances, as well as round the iron globe, if set on the cake of rosin. Thus 

 he tried with a globe of black marble, a silver sand-dish, a small chip box, and 

 a large cork. He observed that the cake, if nothing stood upon it, would in 

 any part strongly attract the light body, as held suspended by the thread; but 

 when the globe, or other body, was set upon it, the edges of the cake attracted 

 the strongest, and so gradually the attraction seemed as it approached the centre 

 to grow less, till at a certain distance it was changed into a repulsion, which 

 proceeded from the globe, or other body placed on the cake, which very 

 strongly repels the light body, unless it be held very near it, and then it attracts 

 it strongly. While the light body is suspended, as in the foregoing experi- 



