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‘ 4 non-eleCtric bodies near it, and the report of which 
was equal to that of a piltol.” If a {broke of this 
kind had gone through the body of M. De Romas, 
probably the late unfortunate Profeflor Richmann had 
no longer been the only martyr to electricity. 
Father Am merlin’s method of preparing wood, lo 
as to make it ferve the purpofe of glals, wax, See. 
in eleCtrical experiments, was published at Lucerne 
in the year 1 7 54, and our author has given us an 
extraCt of it at the end of his work. This father 
found, that the frying of wood, after its being well 
dried in an oven, or otherwife, in either the oil of 
walnuts or that of linfeed, made it fit to injulate thofe 
bodies, which you chofe to eleCtrife, by preventing 
the difTipation of the eleCtricity : not only fo, but 
what makes it ftill more valuable to thofe, who are 
engaged in thefe purfuits, you may excite eleCtricity 
with it, as the Abbe Nollet fays he has done, to his 
great convenience. He fays further, that the end of 
a board mounted upon four pegs, a pair of wooden 
fhoes, fome truncheons of beech, walnut, or lime. 
Sec. fried in oil, colt him but little, and anfwered 
his purpofe better than cakes of wax, pitch, rofin, 
and all the fupports of glafs or filk, which he had 
employed before : and, in cafe of neceflity, a cylinder 
of this prepared wood, or a globe turned out of it, 
will excite an eleCtricity fo ftrong, that you need not be 
at the trouble of exciting it with other bodies. Father 
Ammerlin himfelf employs common wooden mea- 
fures, fuch as are ufually found in granaries, firft 
.boiled in oil, and afterwards mounted lb as to be 
iturned by his wheel. 
The 
