436 PHILOSOPHICAL TKANSACT10N3. [aNNO 1753. 



observed the same phenomenon, with this difference, that the electrical fluid 

 penetrated it with greater difficulty. 



Obs. 8. — The stormy clouds before mentioned remained about 2 hours above 

 the horizon, without either thunder or lightning ; nor did a very heavy rain di- 

 minish the electricity, except about the end, when the clouds began to be dissi- 

 pated. 



About 6 o'clock, in the evening he was told that there were signs of a new 

 storm in the air : he went up, and while he was preparing matters, a young man 

 of the town, 35 years old, subject to an epilepsy, was among the spectators. 



He drew sparks on the epileptic person, who was present, from the first thun- 

 der-clap. At first he bore them ; but in 2 or 3 minutes perceiving his counten- 

 ance change ; and fearing that an accident should happen to him, M. Mazeas 

 begged he would retire. He was no sooner returned home than his senses 

 failed him, and he was seized with a most violent fit. His convulsions were 

 taken off with spirit of hartshorn ; but his reason did not return in an hour and 

 a half. He went up and down stairs like one who walks in his sleep, without 

 speaking or knowing any person, settling his papers, taking snuff, and offering 

 chairs to all that came in. When he was spoken to, he pronounced inarticulate 

 and unconnected words. When he recovered his reason, he fell into another 

 fit. His friends said, that he was more affected with this distemper when it 

 thundered than at any other time ; and that if it happened that he then escaped, 

 which it rarely did, his eyes, his countenance, and the confusion of his expres- 

 sions, sufficiently demonstrated the weakness of his reason. The next day he 

 learned from the man himself, that the fear of thunder was not the cause of his 

 disease ; but that however he found a fatal connexion between the phenomenon 

 and that distemper. He added, that when the fit seized him, he perceived a 

 vapour rising in his breast, with so much rapidity, that he lost all his senses be- 

 fore he could call for help. 



LVIII. A Treatise on the Precession of the Equinoxes, and in general on the 

 Motion of the Nodes, and the Alteration of the Inclination oj" the Orbit of a 

 Planet to the Ecliptic. By M. De St. Jaques Silvabelle. Translated from 

 the French M.S. by J. Bevis, M. D. p. 385. 



If the earth were perfectly spherical, the action of the sun on all the parts 

 which compose it, would not produce any effect to make it turn round its 

 centre ; because the moment which would be produced on one side, would be 

 always counterbalanced by an equal moment on the opposite side of the centre. 



It would be the same if the earth were a spheroid flatted at the poles, and the 

 sun was always in the equator, or in the QOth degree of declination : but in every 

 otlier degree of declination its action on the excess of matter about the equator 



