vii REPORT—1858. 
Franklin, ‘ positive ’ and ‘negative,’ formed an important step, which led to a 
brilliant series of experiments and discoveries, with inventions, such as the 
Leyden jar, for intensifying the electric shock. But whilst the majority of the 
applications of these degrees of mastery over the electric force was calculated 
to amuse or surprise, the instantaneous transmission of electricity through an 
extent of 6000 feet, demonstrated by Sir W. Watson, together with Franklin’s 
discovery of the electric state of the clouds, and of the power of drawing 
off such electricity by pointed bodies, was a brilliant beginning of the appli- 
cation of this subtle science to the discovery of the well-being and needs of 
mankind. Superstitious ignorance might well shrink from playing, as the 
American philosopher with his electric kites seemed to be doing, with light- 
ning,—might gaze with alarm at the Russian Professor * collecting on his elec- 
trical rod the awful charge of the black thunder-cloud,—might deem the 
globe of fire which leapt from the rod upon the head of the experimenter 
and struck him dead as a judgment for tampering with a force that man’s 
instinct, in all ages, has referred to a direct expression of the power and 
will of Deity. But the cultivator of God's intellectual gifts sees rather, 
in the application of the lightning-conductors which now guide harmless to 
the earth the dangerous electricity of the clouds, the predestined fruit and 
reward of the laborious and dauntless application of those gifts, agreeably 
with the rule of right reason, to the unfolding of natural phenomena. 
To hide from the lightning and tremble at the thunder, as the immediate 
manifestation of offended Deity, is the superstition of the savage: to recog- 
nize that both phenomena are under the control of a law, and operating to 
beneficial ends, is the privilege of the sage. ‘This it is which begets a true 
and worthy feeling of reverence for the Lawgiver. 
When the knowledge of the law gives the mode of diverting from the 
well-manned ship and the crowded hall the destructive influence of the 
electric bolt, we then worthily adore the beneficence that has imparted so 
much of the power-interpreting talent as brings that reward for its enjoined 
use. The philosopher, in the course of his hazardous experimental 
researches, may incur a fatal result ; but he becomes then, not the sacrifice 
for presumptuous espial into divine and forbidden mysteries, but the true 
‘martyr of science.’ His death has contributed to save the lives of thousands 
of his fellow-creatures and to allay the distressing fears of millions. 
Magnetism has been studied with two aims,—the one to note the numerical 
relations of its activity to time and space, both in respect of its direction and 
intensity, the other to penetrate the mystery of the nature of the magnetic 
force. 
In reference to the first aim, my estimable predecessor adverted, last year, 
to the fact that it was in the Committee-rooms of the British Association 
that the first step was taken towards that great magnetic organization which 
has since borne so much fruit. Thereby it has been determined that there 
* Richmann. 
