rOL. XL!.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 357 



held up at a foot or two from the tube. But the thing appears more plainly 

 from the following 



Exper, 7. — Having rubbed the tube Tt, fig. 2, pi. 8, and with it attracted a 

 feather, the feather at t was repelled from the tube, whenever it was brought 

 near it ; but suddenly dipping the end t of the tube in water, the feather float- 

 ing in the air came to it again, and stuck to the end of the tube at t, or 

 near f. 



In fair weather this experiment will not succeed, unless the tube be thrust 

 pretty deep into water, a foot at least ; but in moist weather an inch or two 

 will do. 



Though animal substances be generally thought to be electric per se, yet it is 

 only when they are very dry : this is the reason why a living man suspended by 

 a hair-rope, or standing on a cake of resin, to receive electricity from the tube, 

 must be considered as a non-electric, by reason of the fluids of his body. 



Of some Electrical Experiments, made at his Royal Highness the Prince of 

 fVales's Home at Cliefden, on Tuesday the 15th of April, 1738; where 

 the Electricity was conveyed 420 feet in a direct Line. By the Same. 

 N° 454, p. 209. 



Having heard that electricity had been carried along a hempen string 5 or 

 600 feet, but having only seen it when the string was carried backwards and 

 forwards in a room by silk supporters. Dr. D. wished to dry it with a pack- 

 thread string stretched out at full length; for which purpose having joined a 

 cat-gut string of 6 feet long, he fastened it to the inside of a door in the suite 

 of rooms at Cliefden ; and having also tied another cat-gut, like the first, to 

 the other end of the string, he tied it up to the inside of the door at the other 

 end of the house ; but at the place where the packthread was joined to the cat- 

 gut, he left a foot and a half of packthread hanging down, and fastened to it a 

 lignum vitae handle of a burning-glass. Then applying a rubbed tube at the other 

 end of the string, he made the electricity run to the lignum vitae, but with some 

 difficulty, which he attributed to the size, being an animal substance, that still 

 stuck to the packthread as it was new ; therefore he caused the packthread to 

 be wet with a sponge from one end to the other, to wash off the size : then was 

 the electricity from the tube communicated very soon and very strongly ; for 

 the thread of trial was drawn by the lignum vitae at the distance of a foot. 



Afterwards having joined more packthread together, he mnde a string of 420 

 feet long, one end of which was fastened, by the interposition of cat-gut as be- 

 fore, to the iron gates in the garden, before the house, and the end which had 



