[ 569 3 
“ /parks grew weaker and weaker ; and in lefs than 
“ two minutes the tin tube did not appear to be 
* c eleCtrifed at all. The rain continued during the 
4 c thunder, but was confiderably abated at the time 
“ of making the experiment.” Thus far Mr. Canton. 
* 
Mr. Wilfon likewife of the Society, to whom we 
are much obliged for the trouble he has taken in 
thefe purfuits, had an opportunity of verifying Mr. 
Franklin’s hypothecs* He informed me, by a letter 
from near Chelmsford in E/fex, dated Aug. 1 2 , 
1752. that, on that day about noon, he perceived 
feveral electrical fnaps, during, or rather at the end 
of, a thunder-ftorm, from no other apparatus than 
an iron curtain-rod, one end of which he put into the 
neck of a glafs phial, and held this phial in his hand. 
To the other end of the iron he fatten'd three needles 
with fome flk. This phial, fupporting the rod, he 
held in one hand, and drew fnaps from the rod with 
a f nger of his other. This experiment was not made 
upon any eminence, but in the garden of a gentle- 
man,^ at whofe houfe he then was. 
Dr. Bevis obferved, at Mr. Cave’s at St, John’s 
gate, nearly the fame phenomena as Mr. Canton, 
of which an account has been already laid before 
the public. 
Trifling as the effedts here mention’d are, when 
compared with thole, which we have received from 
Paris and Berlin, they are the only ones, that the laft 
fummer here has produced ; and as they were made 
by perfons worthy of credit, they tend to eftablifh 
the authenticity of thofe tranfmitted from our cor- 
refpondents. 
4 C T flatter 
