VOL. XL!.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 347 



been able to excite any electricity by heat, or friction, or any other operation 

 on the bodies themselves ? 



Query 1. Whether, when a string is stretched out at length, with a body 

 hanging at one end of it, to which body we would communicate the electricity 

 of the tube rubbed at the other end, the supporters of the string ought not to 

 be of such bodies as are capable of having electricity excited in them, by fric- 

 tion, heating, beating, or patting, or some immediate operation on the bodies 

 themselves ? 



Query 3. Whether these supporters of the string, mentioned in the last 

 Query, which stops the electrical virtue from passing any further, are not of 

 such a kind, as are incapable of having the electrical virtue excited in them 

 immediately by any operation yet known ; though they are all capable of re- 

 ceiving it from a rubbed tube, even at a great distance, by the communication 

 of a string made of vegetable substances ? 



Query 4. Whether the reason, that some supporters transmit the electricity 

 running from the rubbed tube along the string, to bodies beyond them, be not 

 as follows, viz. that having received some of the electrical stream, they soon 

 become saturated with it, and so receiving no more of it, let the rest pass on 

 without disturbing it? 



Query 5. Whether the reason, that supporters made of vegetable substances, 

 metals, and such others, as stop the electricity abovementioned from running 

 any farther along the string than the place where it rests upon them, be not 

 this ? viz. that they are never saturated with the electrical stream, but conti- 

 nually receive it, and transmit it to the next contiguous body, provided that 

 contiguous body be of the same kind with themselves, and also contiguous to 

 other bodies of the same sort : I mean such as would stop the electricity, if 

 the string was supported by them. For even these supporters will transmit 

 the electricity, if terminated at each end by bodies that transmit the electricity, 

 when they support the string. 



Query 6. Whether we may not distinguish all bodies in general, in respect 

 of electricity, into such as may be excited to electricity, and such as cannot 

 be excited to electricity ? the two kinds of bodies receiving the electricity from 

 other bodies into which it has been excited differently ; the first also trans- 

 mitting the electricity, while the others do not. 



These queries are such as arise from a consideration of experiments made by 

 others, and such as I have made myself. 



Experiments relating to the first Query. — I stretched a cat-gut, about 5 

 feet in length, and fastened it to the top of two chairs in a horizontal situa- 

 tion ; and such another cat-gut string to two other chairs parallel to the first, 



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