[ r 93 ] 
lateral explofion (as I fliall chufe to call it) to be 
very confiderable : for I feveral times obferved, that 
a chain which communicated with the outfide of 
the battery, but which made no part of the circuit, 
made a black fcain on a piece of white paper, on 
which it accidentally lay, almoft as deep as the chain 
that formed the circuit. (Hiftory, p. 644.) And 
when, in order judge, by my feeling, of the late- 
ral force of electrical explofions j I made it pafs over 
a part of my naked arm, the hairs of the fkin were 
all finged, and the papilla pyrami dales raifed, not 
only along the path of the explofion, but alfo 
wherever any part of the chain had touched it, 
though not in the circuit. Ib. p. 686. 
It was to afeertain the nature and effeCts of this 
lateral explofion, that the following experiments 
were made ; and in reciting them, 1 fliall diftinCtly 
note the progrefs of my own thoughts in the courfe 
of the inveftigation, from a ftate of abfolute uncer- 
tainty, to that of the fulleft fatisfaCtion j and, I 
flatter myfelf, that feme of the faCts I fhall exhibit, 
will give furprize and pleafure to thofe, who are beft 
acquainted with, and mod interefted in, the hiftory 
of electricity. 
Not having the leaft doubt, but that if any eleCtric 
fpark pafl”ed between a body that was infulated, and 
another, the infulated body would appear, either to 
have received, or to have loft, electricity > I imagined 
that nothing more was to be done, than to infulate 
bodies placed within the influence of the eleCtric 
circuit, with pith balls hanging front, them ; and, 
upon their diverging with the eleCtric fpark, im- 
mediately to obferve, of what kind the electricity 
Vol. LX> C c they 
