130 Royal Society .— 



stituted for the sole of the boot ; metal plates were also tried : all 

 communicated negative electricity to the body. Woollen stockings 

 are a great impediment to the transmission of electricity from the 

 boot ; when these experiments were made I wore cotton ones. 



When I substituted for the electrometer a long wire galvanometer, 

 such as is usually employed in physiological experiments, the needle 

 was made to advance several degrees. 



At the Meeting of the British Association at Dublin in 1857, 

 Professor Loomis, of New York, attracted great attention by his ac- 

 count of some remarkable electrical phenomena observed in certain 

 houses in that city. It appears that in unusually cold and dry win- 

 ters, in rooms provided with thick carpets and heated by stoves or 

 hot-air apparatus to 70°, electrical phenomena of great intensity are 

 sometimes produced. A lady walking along a carpeted floor drew a 

 spark one quarter of an inch in length between two metal balls, one 

 attached to a gas-pipe, the other touched by her hand ; she also fired 

 ether, ignited a gaslight, charged a Leyden jar, and repelled and at- 

 tracted pith-balls similarly or dissimilarly electrified. Some of these 

 statements were received with great incredulity at the time both here 

 and abroad ; but they have since been abundantly confirmed by the 

 Professor himself and by others. (See Silliman's American Journal 

 of Science, July 1858.) 



My experiments show that these phenomena are exceptional only 

 in degree. The striking effects observed by Professor Loomis were 

 feeble unless the thermometer was below the freezing-point, and 

 most energetic when near zero, the thermometer in the room stand- 

 ing at 70°. Those observed by myself succeed in almost any weather 

 when all the necessary conditions are fulfilled. Some of these condi- 

 tions must frequently be present ; and experimentalists cannot be too 

 much on their guard against the occurrence of these abnormal effects. 

 I think I have done a service to them, especially to those engaged in 

 the delicate investigations of animal electricity, by drawing their at- 

 tention to the subject. 



May 19. — General Sir Edward Sabine, K.C.B., President, in the 



Chair. 



The following communications were read : — 



" On the Cause and Theoretic Value of the Resistance of Flexure 

 in Beams." By W. H. Barlow, F.R.S. 



The author refers to his previous papers, read in 1855 and 1857, 

 wherein he described experiments showing the existence of an ele- 

 ment of strength in beams, which varied with the degree of flexure, 

 •and acts in addition to the resistance of tension and compression of 

 the longitudinal fibres. It was pointed out that the ratio of the actual 

 strength of solid rectangular beams to the strength as computed by 

 the theory of Liebnitz is, 



In cast iron, as about 2\ to 1 . 



In wrought iron as If and If to 1. 



And in steel, as If and If to 1. 



