His attention was carefully given to ascertaining the degrees in which different substances are capable of being excited, and he gives several lists of such, inferring therefrom that the most transparent and the most brittle are always the most electric.
At pp. 64 and 124 of the above-named “Traité” he states that electricity affects mineral waters much more sensibly than common water; that black ribbons are more readily attracted than those of other colours, next to the black being the brown and deep red; and that, of two glass cylinders exactly alike, except that one is transparent and the other slightly coloured, the transparent one will be the more readily excited.
References.—The “Traité,” notably at pp. 135 and 164; “Biog. Générale,” Vol. VI. p. 939; Le Bas, “Dict. Encycl. de la France”; Quérard, “La France Littéraire”; Chaudon et Delandine, “Dict. historique.”
A.D. 1751.—Adanson (Michael), a French naturalist of very high reputation, who, before the age of nineteen, had actually described four thousand species of the three kingdoms of nature, introduces in his “History of Senegal” the silurus electricus, a large species of eel originally brought from Surinam. Sir John Leslie states that the silurus is furnished with a very peculiar and complex nervous apparatus which has been fancifully likened to an electrical battery, and that, from a healthy specimen exhibited in London, vivid sparks were drawn in a darkened room. M. Broussonet alludes to the silurus as Le Trembleur in the “Hist. de l’Acad. Royale des Sciences” for 1782, p. 692.
Adanson also called attention, in 1756, to the electrical powers of the malapterus electricus, but, according to the able naturalist, James Wilson (“Ichthyology,” Encycl. Brit.), there is a much earlier account of the fish extracted from the narrative of Baretus and Oviedo dated 1554.
The Swedish scientist, Karl A. Rudolphi, pupil of Linnæus, called the princeps helminthologorum, has given a detailed description as well as illustrations of the electric organs of the malapterus in “Ueber den Zitter-wels,” Abh. Berl. Acad. VII.... This fish, which the Arabs call Raad or Raash (thunder), gives its discharge chiefly when touched on the head, but is powerless when held by the tail, the electrical organs in fact not reaching the caudal fin.
To Adanson has been attributed the authorship of an essay on the “Electricity of the Tourmaline” Paris, 1757, which bears the name of the Duke de Noya Caraffa.
References.—Spreng, “Hist. R. Herb.,” Vol. II; and “Adanson’s Biog.,” Vol. II. “Encycl. Britannica,” Rees’ “Cycl.” Supplement and in “Bibl. Universelle,” Vol. I; Chambers’ “Encyl.” for 1868, Vol. III. p. 822; Cavallo, “Nat. Phil.,” Philad., 1825, Vol. II. p. 237; Scientific American Supplement, No. 457, pp. 7300, 7301; Rozier, Vol. XXVII. p. 139, and W. Bryant in Trans. Am. Phil. Soc. II. p. 166, O. S.
A.D. 1752.—Franklin (Benjamin) (1706–1790), an able American editor, philosopher and statesman, crowns his many experiments with the brilliant discovery of the identity of electricity and lightning. Humboldt says: “From this period the electric process passes from the domain of speculative physics into that of cosmical contemplation—from the recesses of the study to the freedom of nature” (“Cosmos,” Vol. II. 1849, p. 727). Wall (A.D. 1708) had only alluded to the resemblance of electricity to thunder and lightning; Grey (A.D. 1720) had conjectured their identity and implied that they differed only in one degree, while Nollet (A.D. 1746) pointed out a closer relationship than ever before adduced between lightning and the electric spark; but it was left for Franklin to prove the fact with empirical certainty.
Franklin’s attention was first directed to electrical studies in 1745, by a letter from Peter Collinson, Fellow of the Royal Society of London, to the Literary Society of Philadelphia, and he first wrote on the subject to that gentleman on the 28th of July, 1747. This was followed by several other similar communications up to April 18, 1754, the whole of which comprise most of what subsequently appeared under the title “New Experiments and Observations on Electricity, made at Philadelphia, in America, by Benjamin Franklin, LL.D. and F.R.S.”