[ >95 ] 
was upon the threads all the time I was making the 
experiment. 
This experiment, as will eafily be imagined, 
fhook my whole hypothefis, and confounded all my 
ideas. I could not queflion the faCt, having re- 
peated the experiment, with precifely the fame event, 
I believe, above fifty times, on account of having 
been hardly able to believe my own fenfes, or thole 
of others. There was an evident electric fpark, 
fometimes near half an inch in length, betwixt the 
bodies compofing the eleCtric circuit and the infulated 
tube, in fuch a ftate of the air, as I knew, by fre- 
quent trials, would have kept it electrified a long 
time, and yet there was no communication of 
eleCtricity. 
I do not remember that I was ever more puzzled 
with any appearance in nature than I was with this; 
and, in the night following thefe experiments, end- 
lefs were the fchemes that occurred to me, of account- 
ing for them, and the methods with which I pro- 
poled to diverfify them the next morning, in order 
to find out the caufe of this ftrange phenomenon. 
Accordingly, I was no fooner at liberty to attend to 
this experiment ; but, repeating it with fome differ- 
ence in the difpofition of the apparatus, I obferved 
that, upon every difeharge, a flight motion was given 
to the threads that hung from the infulated tube. 
Upon this the impofiibility of an eleCtric fpark, neither 
giving nor taking any thing from an infulated body, 
contrary to my mod attentive obfervation, and that 
of my afliftants, I concluded that fome motion muffc 
have been given to the threads the day before ; efpe- 
cially when I found that, in thefe latter experiments, 
C c 2 the 
