27 (i PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO I746, 



is this electric virtue to be communicated to such bodies as have it not, and 

 which are not capable of acquiring it by bare friction only? How is the electric 

 mattei propagated? And, lastly, in what proportion is it distributed? 



As to the first, the author observes, that this electric virtue is no other way 

 to be communicated, but by the near approach of a body already actually pos- 

 sessed of the same ; that the rule laid down by Mons. du Fay, " That bodies 

 never receive electricity by communication, unless they are supported by bodies 

 electric in their own nature," does not always take place, and that it is subject 

 to great exceptions. For, first, in the Leyden experiment, the phial filled with 

 water is strongly electrified by communication, even when carried in the hand, 

 which is not a body electric by nature. 2dly. All bodies that are electrified by 

 means of a phial of water fitted to a wire, and which has already received a great 

 degree of virtue by communication; all such bodies, placed in any curve line, 

 connecting the exterior wire, and that part of the bottle which is below the sur- 

 face of the water, acquire electricity, without being placed on resin. Silk, glass, 

 or the like. 



Thus one may give a violent concussion in both the arms to 200 men all at 

 once, who holding each other by the hand, so form the curve just mentioned, 

 when the first holds the bottle, and the last touches the wire with the end of his 

 finger; and this, whether these persons actually touch each other's hands, or 

 whether they are connected by iron chains, that either dip in water, or drag on 

 the ground; whether they are all mounted on cakes of resin, or whether they 

 only stand on the floor; in all which cases the experiment equally succeeds. 

 Electricity has in this manner been carried through a wire of the length of 2000 

 toises, that is to say, of about a Paris league, or near 2-^ English miles, though 

 part of the wire dragged on wet grass, went over charmil hedges or palisades, 

 and over ground newly ploughed up. 



3dly. The water of the basin in the Thuilleries, whose surface is about an 

 acre, has been electrified in the following manner: there was stretched round 

 half the circumference of the basin an iron chain, which was entirely out of the 

 water: the two extremities of this chain answered to those of one of the dia- 

 meters of the octagon; an observer, placed at one of these extremities, held the 

 chain with his left hand, and dipped his right at the same time into the water of 

 the basin ; while another observer, at the opposite side of the basin, held the 

 other end of the chain in his right hand, and a phial well electrified in his left ; 

 he then caused the wire of his phial to touch an iron rod, fixed upright in a piece 

 of cork that floated near the edge of the basin ; at that instant both observers felt 

 a violent shock in both their arms. This same fact was again confirmed by expe- 

 riments made on 2 basins at the same time, that it might distinctly appear that 

 the electrical effluvia did really pass along the superficies of the water. 



