418 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNQ 1773; 



ing out sparks of fire against every substance that approached her. They found 

 however that these sparks were not strong enough to fire spirits. Mr. B. then 

 coated a small phial, and soon charged it from the conductor; but afterwards he 

 did it more completely from the hair itself in the following manner. He fixed a 

 brush of small wires to the large one that went through the cork of the phial; 

 and taking the phial in his hand, he followed every motion of the comb with the 

 brush of wires; and, in the dark, could observe the fire pass by these wires into 

 the bottle. In a few minutes he found it was highly charged ; when taking a 

 spoonful of warm spirits in his left hand, and with his right, which grasped the 

 phial, bringing the hook of the great wire near the surface of the spirits, a large 

 spark darted from it, gave him a smart shock, and at the same time set the 

 spirits on fire. 



The day following, he wanted to repeat the experiments ; but as the weather 

 was hazy, and the frost had greatly abated, they did not so well answer. How- 

 ever, from making them on several heads, he found that the stronger the hair, 

 the greater was the effect; whereas soft flaxen hair produced little or no fire at 

 all. These experiments were made in a warm, dry room, before a good fire, and 

 at a time when the thermometer, in the open air, was at 6 or 7 degrees below 

 the point of congelation. The hair, which succeeded best, was perfectly dry, 

 and no powder or pomatum had been used on it for some months before. 



XXI. Of a Fossil lately found near Christ-Church, Hants. By the Hon. 

 Daines Harrington, V. P. R. S. p. 1 7 1 • 



The shining divisions on the surface of this stone, seem to be the scales of a 

 fish, which Mr. B. conceives to be the acus maxima squamosa, engraved in 

 Willoughby's History of Fish, tab. p. 8, and described by Ray, in his Synopsis 

 Piscium, p. lOg. It appears by the catalogue of English fossils, in the collection 

 of Dr. Woodward, that a still larger specimen of the same sort was found in 

 Stansfield quarry, near Woodstock, -though Dr. Woodward could only procure a 

 single scale, v. 2, p. 53, c. 24- Single scales from the same quarry are also to 

 be seen in the noble collection of fossils, given 1^ Mr. Brander, f.r.s., to the 

 British Museum. Though this fish therefore is a stranger to our seas, yet its 

 exuviae are by no means so to our cliffs and quarries. 



p. s. Mr. Hunter, f.r.s., having seen the fossil at Crane-court, happened to 

 dissect a beaver's tail very soon afterwards, which he showed, as bearing a strong 

 resemblance to the scaly divisions in this specimen ; Mr. B. however still thinks 

 that the form of the scales in the acus maxima squamosa of Willoughby is still 

 nearer to it, than those in a beaver's tail. 



