42 Proceedings of Boy al Society of Edinburgh. [sess. 
piece of electrified metal immersed in the cold air.* Circumstances 
prevented further observations on this very interesting result at 
that time, but the experiment was repeated with a portable electro- 
meter in December of 1896, and we were made quite sure of the 
result by searching tests. During April and May of the present 
year observations were again made by means of (1) a multicellular 
electrometer reading up to 240 volts, and (2) a vertical electrostatic 
voltmeter (fig. 3, below) reading up to 12,000 volts. A pointed 
* We have recently (June 1897) found the following statement, in Worthing- 
ton’s communication to the British Association (1889, Report, pp. 225, 227) 
“ on the Discharge of Electrification by Flames ” : — “ The observation seems to 
have been made by Priestley, that the discharge takes place ivith apparently 
equal rapidity, if the rod be held at the side of, or even below, the flame at 
the distance of, say, five centimetres.” The four words which we have 
italicised are not verified with the forms and arrangements which we have 
used, as we find enormously greater leakage five centimetres above a flame 
than five centimetres below it ; but it is very interesting to learn that Priestley 
had found any leakage at all through air five centimetres below a flame. 
