No. 1 [93]. Account of experiments made in electricity at Marly.

The early Letters of Dr. Franklin on Electricity having been translated into French, and printed at Paris; the Abbé Mazeas, in a Letter to Dr. Stephen Hales, dated St. Germain, May 20, 1752, gives the following Account (printed in the Philosophical Transactions) of the Experiment made at Marly, in Pursuance of that proposed by Mr. Franklin, Pages 227, 228.

Sir,

The Philadelphian experiments, that Mr. Collinson, a member of the Royal Society, was so kind as to communicate to the public, having been universally admired in France, the king desired to see them performed. Wherefore the Duke D'Ayen offered his majesty his country-house at St. Germain, where M. de Lor, master of experimental philosophy, should put those of Philadelphia in execution. His majesty saw them with great satisfaction, and greatly applauded Messieurs Franklin and Collinson. These applauses of his majesty having excited in Messieurs de Buffon, D'Alibard, and de Lor, a desire of verifying the conjectures of Mr. Franklin, upon the analogy of thunder and electricity, they prepared themselves for making the experiment.

M. D'Alibard chose for this purpose, a garden situated at Marly, where he placed upon an electrical body a pointed bar of iron, of forty feet high. On the 10th of May, twenty minutes past two in the afternoon, a stormy cloud having passed over the place where the bar stood, those that were appointed to observe it, drew near, and attracted from it sparks of fire, perceiving the same kind of commotions as in the common electrical experiments.

M. de Lor, sensible of the good success of this experiment, resolved to repeat it at his house in the Estrapade, at Paris. He raised a bar of iron ninety-nine feet high, placed upon a cake of resin, two feet square, and three inches thick. On the 18th of May, between four and five in the afternoon, a stormy cloud having passed over the bar, where it remained half an hour, he drew sparks from the bar, like those from the gun barrel, when, in the electrical experiments, the globe is only rubbed by the cushion, and they produced the same noise, the same fire, and the same crackling. They drew the strongest sparks at the distance of nine lines, while the rain, mingled with a little hail, fell from the cloud, without either thunder or lightning; this cloud being, according to all appearance, only the consequence of a storm, which happened elsewhere.

I am, with a profound respect,

Your most humble and obedient servant,

G. MAZEAS.