584 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO I76I. 



probably the late unfortunate Professor Richmann had no longer been the only 

 martyr to electricity. 



Father Ammersin's method of preparing wood, so as to make it serve the pur- 

 pose of glass, wax, &c. in electrical experiments, was published at Lucerne in 

 the year 1754, and our author has given us an extract of it at the end of his 

 work. This father found that the frying of wood, after its being well dried in 

 an oven, or otherwise, in either the oil of walnuts or that of linseed, made it fit 

 to insulate those bodies, which you chose to electrize, by preventing the dissi- 

 pation of the electricity : not only so, but what makes it still more valuable to 

 those who are engaged in these pursuits, you may excite electricity with it, as 

 the Abbe Nollet says he has done, to his great convenience. He says further 

 that the end of a board mounted upon 4 pegs, a pair of wooden shoes, some 

 truncheons of beech, walnut, or lime, Sec. fried in oil, cost him but little, and 

 answered his purpose better than cakes of wax, pitch, rosin, and all the supports 

 of glass or silk, which he had employed before; and in case of necessity a cylin- 

 der of this prepared wood, or a globe turned out of it, will excite an electricity 

 so strong, that you need not be at the trouble of exciting it with other bodies. 

 Father Ammersin himself employs common wooden measures, such as are usu- 

 ally found in granaries, first boiled in oil, and afterwards mounted so as to be 

 turned by his wheel. 



The Abbe Nollet, being desirous of supporting the validity of some opinions 

 of his, in regard to the nature and properties of electricity, desired of the Royal 

 Academy, that a committee should be appointed to examine the truth of some 

 experiments, which the Abbe considered as proofs of what he had established. 

 A committee was accordingly appointed, which consisted of Messrs. Deparcieux, 

 Fougeroux, Bezout, Tillet, and Brisson, who all attested to the academy, that 

 the results of these experiments, at the making of which they were present, 

 were such as the Abbe had foretold, in a memoir, which had been read to the 

 academy ; an attestation of which is given in this work, signed by M. de Fouchy, 

 secretary to the academy, and is dated 10th April 1760. 



These experiments are 60 in number, some of which are subdivided to more 

 subordinate ones, and are most of them exceedingly well chosen. They tend to 

 prove the simultaneous aflfluence and efl[luence of the electric matter, a doctrine 

 long since espoused, and very well supported by our author; but vehemently, 

 and with much asperity, controverted by some gentlemen at Paris. For a detail 

 of these experiments, I must refer you to the work itself; and as they without 

 doubt are very fairly stated, every person conversant in these inquiries will care- 

 fully consider them, and at the same time reflect how far the hypothesis is dedu- 

 cible from the phenomena. 



