VOL. XLVIII.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 377 



tioned. But to this it may be replied, that it was not enough to know the fact, 

 unless people wei'e sufficiently acquainted with it to take it for what it really was; 

 that is, the electric virtue : for without that, observations of this kind could have 

 very little weight with any person engaged in the inquiry. At present, indeed, 

 when we know, from the experiment of Marly-la-ville, that a stormy cloud is a 

 great electric mass, the action of which extends itself sensibly even to bodies 

 which are on the surface of the earth, we must agree, by reflecting on them, 

 that the lights which have been seen on the crosses placed on the tops of several 

 steeples, those which the Roman soldiers said they had observed at the end of 

 their pikes, and those lambent flames which appear on the masts of ships, which 

 mariners call St. Helmo's fire, are so many electrical phenomena. But until the 

 moment that this experiment was made, which opened our eyes with regard to 

 the possibility and nature of these marvellous effects, these appearances were re- 

 garded either as popular illusions, or false prodigies, or even as luminous va- 

 pours, which might be ranged in the class of phosphori. Besides, as these 

 were seen but seldom, if ever we had been tempted to attribute them to the in- 

 fluence of stormy clouds, we might have been dissuaded from it, by considering 

 the little agreement there is between the rarity of these effects, and the frequency 

 of the causes, which might produce them. 



We see therefore how important it is to describe exactly the phenomena we 

 observe : otherwise, how long may it be, before we can deduce any real instruc- 

 tion from those, which we have been informed of in a negligent and superficial 

 manner ? We have heard all our lives of St. Helmo's fire, of those which the 

 ancients call Castor and Pollux, and of the comazants of our mariners. But, 

 from what we have had related to us, and from what we have read, who could 

 have been prevailed on to range them with electrical phenomena .'' We have heard 

 them represented as thin lambent shining lights, a kind of phosphoreal vapour : 

 but there is a passage in the memoirs of the Count de Forbin, quoted by our 

 author, mentioning St. Helmo's fire ; which if any one, well versed in the phe- 

 nomena of electricity, had carefully attended to and considered a few years ago, 

 he might have prognosticated success to Mr. Franklin, when he proposed his 



These appearances are called, by both French and Spaniards inhabiting the coasts of the Mediter- 

 ranean, St. Helme or St. Telme's fires ; by the Italians, the fires of St. Peter and St. Nicholas, and 

 are frequently taken notice of by the writers of voyages. If some late accounts from France are to 

 be depended on, we are informed, that at Plauzet it has been observed for time immemorial ; and 

 M. Binon, the cure of the place, bears his testimony of the truth, that, for 27 years, which he haa 

 resided there in that capacity, in great storms, accompanied with black clouds, and frequent light- 

 ning, the three pointed extremities ot the cross of the steeple of that place appear surrounded with a 

 body of flame ; and that, when this phenomenon has been seen, the storm was no longer to bo 

 dreaded, and calm weather returned soon after. — Orig. 

 VOL. X. 3 C 



