268 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



first stated by Massenbroek ; that Franklin and Daliband adopted 

 it from observations made on compasses struck by lightning. 



A glass globe exhausted of air is revolved on its poles ; with 

 friction on its outside, it becomes luminous within — very brilliant 

 zones of light play in it, no electricity being sensible on the out- 

 side. 



Dr. Paliniere, when cleaning the upper part of a common 

 barometer, saw light in the vacuum above the mercury. He 

 tried it on a transparent glass bottle, and found light within 

 sufficient to distinguish objects in the dark. There is a perfect 

 analogy between light and electricity. 



That electricity moves more freely in vacuum than in air. 

 The Abbe Nollet at that time thought that electricity passed 

 through glass. 



Dr. Mimbray, in October, 1*146, applied electricity to the forc- 

 ing of vegetation, and proved that little branches and buds were 

 quickly grown by it. Mons. Tallabert, of Geneva, tried a couple 

 of hours a day to produce the same effect on plants — on gilliflow- 

 ers and violets — and succeeded in increasing their stalks and 

 branches. The Abbe Monon in 1748, succeeded with the renun- 

 culus. Hyacinths appeared to me to succeed best. 



Mons. Pivati believed that in the human body electricity would 

 prove the potable gold, it having cured a gouty bishop as by 

 miracle. 



Zanotti thought that the sparks from balsams did it. 



Bianchi, of Turin, believed in its cure of paralysis. 



A collection of those experiments was published in Paris in 1763 



Mons. de la Sonne, a distinguished physician of the first order, 

 for a long time examined these experiments of Nollet and others 

 in the Royal Hotel of Invalids, on great numbers of paralytic 

 soldiers, and pronounced that medicine could not flatter itself 

 with having any great advantage from all these electric experi- 

 ments. 



DEEP PLOWING VS. DROUTH. 



A discussion now ensued upon the advantages of deep-plowing 

 against drouth. 



Adrian Bergen, a Long Island farmer, stated that several cases 

 had occurred within his knowledge where crops had been saved 

 from damage by drouth by deep plowing. Mr. Bergen exhibited 

 specimens of white flint corn, grown by him, which ripens very 

 early, and produces well. 



