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LII. A Letter to the right honourable the 
Earl 0/ Macclesfield, P ref dent of the Royal 
Society, from Mr. Benjamin Wilfon, F.R.S. 
concerning fome electrical Experiments, 
made at Paris. 
■y 
My Lord, Sept. l8 > i753> Great Qi?een-flr. 
J ' London. 
Read Dec. ^>/^\ N the 7 th of this month I was at the 
J 753 - palace of St. German’s near Paris, 
where I had the fatisfaCtion of feeing Dr. le Monnier’s 
experiment relating to the electricity of the air ; of 
which an account was fent me by Abbe Mazeas, and 
was read before our honourable Society in December 
laft ; and I obferved, that though the wind was weft- 
erly, and the air moift, yet the fufpended wire, at 
different times, attracted very light bodies, at very 
fmall diftances ; the mean of which diftances feem’d 
to be about, r 0 of an inch. 
Abbe Mazeas informed me, that Dr. le Monnier, 
fome months ago, had read a paper, at a meeting 
of the Royal Academy of Sciences, in which he told 
them, that he had great reafon to believe the elec- 
tric matter did not come from the earth at all, 
but from the air. Upon my mentioning this to the 
DoCtor, I found him ffill of the fame opinion. 
As there was a convenient apparatus in his apart- 
ment, I propofed making the experiments : for I 
always thought that the eleCtric matter came from 
both, but principally from the earth ; and that, 
probably, a difference of 10 to 1 would be per- 
ceived, upon making the experiments. 
Xx 2 
The 
