VOL. XLI.] fHILOSOPHlCAL TRANSACTIONS. 473 



in its electric state, he applied to it another stick of wax, which was first 

 rubbed ; and it repelled the feather, though it had not touched it before, and 

 did the same as the other stick of wax had done. 



After that he rubbed a glass tube, which first attracted and then repelled the 

 feather, as the wax had done. And another tube, being rubbed, repelled the 

 feather, when it was put into an electric state by the first tube, without first 

 attracting it. But non-electrics, such as the finger, or a stick, attracted the 

 feather, when it had first been made electric ; and not only so, but electrics 

 per se, when they were become non-electric, as the tube unrubbed, or the 

 wax unrubbed ; nay, the rubbed tube also, when its end was moistened, 

 or that end of it turned to the feather, which had been held in the hand. 



Then he made the feather electric, by the application of the excited tube ; 

 and having rubbed the wax, to give it electriciiy, he brought it near the fea- 

 ther, which it attracted strongly, though it had repelled it before, when the 

 feather had been made electric by wax. 



Afterwards he made the feather electric by the wax, which first attracted 

 and then repelled it : and, having applied the rubbed tube to the feather, it 

 attracted it strongly, though it repelled it when the feather was made electric 

 by another glass tube. 



Electrical Experiments made before the Royal Society, on Thursday, March 13, 

 1740-t. By the same. N° 459, p. 639. 



Dr. D. having showed lately by some plain experiments, that the electricity 

 of glass is different from that of sealing-wax ; because the wax attracted a 

 feather suspended in the air by a fine silk, when the rubbed glass tube repelled 

 it, he made the experiment with a cake of rosin, instead of sealing-wax ; and 

 it appeared to have the same kind of electricity as the wax. Then considering 

 that the supporters of any non-electric conductors of electricity, must them- 

 selves be electric, he tried whether bodies, endued with either kind of elec- 

 tricity, were in any-wise different in that case, by the following experi- 

 ments. 



He laid a piece of wood, 4 feet long, on 1 glass plates, whose ends stood 

 1 foot beyond the side of the table on which they were laid ; then applying the 

 rubbed tube to one end of the wood, the other attracted leaf-brass, or a thread 

 hanging down from a stick. Then, instead of the glass plates, he laid the 

 long piece of wood on 2 cakes of rosin, and applied the rubbed tube to the end 

 of the said wood, which conducted the electricity to the other end, where leaf- 

 brass and the thread were attracted in the same manner. 



This shows that, in order to conduct electricity along any non-electric body, 



VOL. viii. 3 P 



