FRANKLIN'S KITE. 



257 



Animals can be killed by both, and both cause blindness ; 

 electricity always finds its way along the best conductor, or 

 the substance which carries it most easily, so does lightning ; 

 pointed bodies attract the electric spark, and in the same 

 way lightning strikes spires, and trees, and mountain tops. 

 Is it not most likely that lightning is nothing more than 

 electricity passing from one cloud to another just as an 

 electric spark passes from one substance to another ? 



Franklin communicated these ideas to the Royal Society 

 in London, suggesting at the same time that, if he was right, 

 it would be possible to prevent a great deal of the harm 

 done by lightning by fixing upright rods of iron near high 

 buildings so that the electricity might run down from the 

 clouds into the earth without doing any harm. But this 

 notion seemed so absurd, even to clever men, that they 

 could not help laughing when his papers were read, and did 

 not even think them worth printing. You will easily un- 

 derstand that after this Franklin was ashamed to speak of 

 an experiment he meant to make by which he hoped to 

 bring down electricity from the sky. So we find that he 

 told no one but his son, whom he took with him upon this 

 strange expedition. 



Franklin's idea was that if he could send an iron rod 

 up into the clouds to meet the lightning, it would become 

 charged with the electricity, which he believed was there, 

 and would send it down a thread attached to it, so that he 

 might be able to feel it. He took, therefore, two light strips 

 of cedar fastened crossways, upon which he stretched a silk 

 handkerchief tied by the corners to the end of the cross, and 

 to the top of this kite he fixed a sharp-pointed iron wire 

 more than a foot long. He then put a tail and a string to 

 his kite, and at the end of the string near his hand he tied 



