378 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1773. 



recive this fluid more readily, will not mend the argument in the least; because, 

 the more we lessen the power of resisting, even supposing the whole conductor 

 to be in that state, the more we increase the power of invitation. 



In regard to other experiments, with locks of cotton,* which are acted on in 

 a particular manner by the apposition of points, and the conclusions drawn from 

 thence, in favour of pointed conductors, as causing similar effects on the frag- 

 ments or small clouds, which, hanging below the thunder clouds, have been 

 supposed a kind of stepping stones, for the lightning to pass on, towards the 

 earth: such pointed conductors being supposed to occasion those fragments to 

 retire up into the cloud whence they were suspended; and on that account, to 

 prevent a stroke from lightning, which might otherwise have happened, I shall, 

 for the present, wave entering in this philosophy, as I could wish the conjecture 

 to be reconsidered : because I apprehend it is liable to many objections, which to 

 enumerate would carry me beyond the proper bounds of such a paper as this. 

 However, if the same opinion should again be offered, and brought in argu- 

 ment, it may be worth while to enter more deeply into the inquiry. 



If those gentlemen, who argued at the committee for the necessity of points, 

 could have made it appear, that such points draw ofF, and conduct away, the 

 lightning imperceptibly and by degrees, without causing any explosion, during a 

 thunder storm (which seems to have been once the opinion of Dr. Franklin) I 

 should readily have subscribed to their report. But experience shows us, that 

 the fact is otherwise: there being many instances, where violent explosions of 

 lightning have happened to conductors that were sharply pointed. And 3 in 

 particular, the accounts of which are inserted in a publication of Dr. Franklin's, "f" 

 where the points were dissipated, or destroyed; and a small part of an iron rod 

 melted next the points of one of them ; and also at the several crooked ends of 

 the rods below, where they were hooked on to each other, and formed the con- 

 ductor belonging to Mr. Maine in North America. But as those letters are 

 long, and contain several other curious facts, I shall reserve them, together with 

 some further observations on the nature and power of that resisting principle, 

 which is found to act so sensibly against the attacks of the electric fluid, or 

 lightning, to some future dissertation. 



There is no building, that I know of, more exposed to this kind of danger, 

 than the Eddystone lighthouse, as it stands upon a rock in the sea, several miles 

 from land. The fixing of a conductor to that building, was thought highly 

 proper; and the fixing of a point on it, as highly improper. It was therefore 

 resolved on to put up a conductor without a point, that no more lightning might 

 be unnecessarily solicited to the building, and that all the lightning, which acci- 



■ * Dr. Franklin's experiments. — Orig. 



+ Dr. Franklin's Experiments^ p. 394, 4-16, *^7, &c.— Orig. 



