VOL. LI.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 415 



fore despair of the means of bringing this matter to a fair decision. He 

 expected, that if an electrical stroke should be made to pass through a solid 

 body, with so- much force as to pierce and tear the substance of it, such marks 

 would be left, as might enable us, with certainty, to trace the course of the 

 electrical power in its passage through the body. 



Having no apparatus of his own capable of producing such effects, he had 

 recourse to a worthy member of this Society, doctor Franklin, who was pos- 

 sessed of a very good one. He had communicated all his observations to this 

 gentleman as they occurred, and, in return, met with an ingenuity and can- 

 dour that render him as estimable in private life, as the improvements he has 

 introduced into electricity, and particularly his discovery in relation to thunder 

 and lightning, will render his reputation lasting in the learned world. They 

 differed in opinion with regard to the point in question ; yet Mr. S. found Dr. 

 _F. ready to give him all the assistance in his power, for bringing the matter to 

 a fair decision. Mr. S. had seen him pierce a quire of paper with a stroke of 

 electricity ; and as it had been struck several times before, he desired it might be 

 given him, that he might at leisure examine the effects of the sundry strokes. 



When Mr. S. came to do so, he observed, that at every hole which had been 

 made through the quire, the upper and the under leaf (for the quire had been 

 laid in a horizontal position when it was struck) were ragged about the orifice, 

 and those ragged edges pointed mostly outwards from the body of the quire. 

 But, what was more material, when he cam© to turn over the leaves, he found 

 that the edges of the holes were bent regularly two different ways (and more 

 remarkably so about the middle of the quire,) one part of each hole upwards, 

 and the other part downwards ; so that, tracing any particular hole as it traversed 

 the quire, he found on one side the fibres pointed one way, and on the other 

 side the other way ; much in such a manner, as if the hole had been made in 

 the quire, by drawing two threads in contrary directions through it. This was 

 not all : a piece of paper, covered on one side with Dutch gilding, had been 

 accidentally left between two leaves in the quire, and had been pierced by two 

 different strokes. This exhibited a very remarkable appearance : where each of 

 the strokes had been given, the gold leaf was stripped off, and had left the 

 paper bare for a little space, in an oblong form, rounded at the ends ; in which, 

 at the distance of about a quarter of an inch from each other, appeared two 

 points, one of them a little round hole, the other only an indent or impression, 

 such as might have been made by the point of a bodkin. In the leaf which 

 fronted the gilding, two such points likewise appeared, corresponding to those 

 above-mentioned ; so that the hole in the one was opposite to the impression in 

 the other, but surrounded with little black or blueish circles. When the hole, 

 which had been struck in the quire, was traced from above down to the gilding 



