the form of clouds, or otherwise, will retain that quantity of electrical fire, till they meet with other clouds or bodies not so much electrified, and then will communicate as before mentioned.

5. Every particle of matter electrified is repelled by every other particle equally electrified. Thus the stream of a fountain, naturally dense and continual, when electrified, will separate and spread in the form of a brush, every drop endeavouring to recede from every other drop. But, on taking out the electrical fire, they close again.

6. Water being strongly electrified (as well as when heated by common fire) rises in vapors more copiously; the attraction of cohesion among its particles being greatly weakened, by the opposite power of repulsion introduced with the electrical fire; and, when any particle is by any means disengaged, it is immediately repelled, and so flies into the air.

7. Particles happening to be situated as A and B (Fig. 6, representing the profile of a vessel of water) are more easily disengaged than C and D, as each is held by contact with three only, whereas C and D are each in contact with nine. When the surface of the water has the least motion, particles are continually pushed into the situation represented by A and B.

8. Friction between a non-electric and an electric per se will produce electrical fire; not by creating, but collecting it; for it is equally diffused in our walls, floors, earth, and the whole mass of common matter. Thus the whirling glass globe, during its friction against the cushion, draws fire from the cushion, the cushion is supplied from the frame of the machine, that from the floor on which it stands. Cut off the communication by thick glass or wax, placed under the cushion, and no fire can be produced, because it cannot be collected.

9. The ocean is a compound of water, a non-electric, and salt, an electric per se.

10. When there is a friction among the parts near its surface, the electrical fire is collected from the parts below. It is then plainly visible in the night; it appears in the stern and in the wake of every sailing vessel; every dash of an oar shows it, and every surf and spray; in storms the whole sea seems on fire. The detached particles of water, then repelled from the electrified surface, continually carry off the fire as it is collected; they rise and form clouds, and those clouds are highly electrified, and retain the fire till they have an opportunity of communicating it.

11. The particles of water, rising in vapors, attach themselves to particles of air.

12. The particles of air are said to be hard, round, separate, and distant from each other; every particle strongly repelling every other particle, whereby they recede from each other, as far as common gravity will permit.

13. The space between any three particles, equally repelling each other, will be an equilateral triangle.

14. In air compressed, these triangles are smaller; in rarefied air they are larger.

15. Common fire, joined with air, increases the repulsion, enlarges the triangles, and thereby makes the air specifically lighter. Such air, among denser air,

will rise.

16. Common fire, as well as electrical fire, gives repulsion to the particles of water, and destroys their attraction of cohesion; hence common fire, as well as electrical fire, assists in raising vapors.

17. Particles of water, having no fire in them, mutually attract each other. Three particles of water then, being attached to the three particles of a triangle of

air, would, by their mutual attraction operating against the air's repulsion, shorten the sides and lessen the triangle, whereby that portion of air made denser would sink to the earth with its water, and not rise to the formation of a cloud.

18. But, if every particle of water attaching itself to air brings with it a particle of common fire, the repulsion of the air being assisted and strengthened by the fire, more than obstructed by the mutual attraction of the particles of water, the triangle dilates, and that portion of air, becoming rarer and specifically lighter, rises.

19. If the particles of water bring electrical fire when they attach themselves to air, the repulsion between the particles of water electrified, joins with the natural repulsion of the air, to force its particles to a greater distance, whereby the triangles are dilated, and the air rises, carrying up with it the water.

20. If the particles of water bring with them portions of both sorts of fire, the repulsion of the particles of air is still more strengthened and increased, and the triangles farther enlarged.

21. One particle of air may be surrounded by twelve particles of water of equal size with itself, all in contact with it, and by more added to those.

22. Particles of air, thus, loaded, would be drawn nearer together by the mutual attraction of the particles of water, did not the fire, common or electrical, assist their repulsion.

23. If air, thus loaded, be compressed by adverse winds, or by being driven against mountains, &c., or condensed by taking away the fire that assisted it in expanding, the triangles contract, the air with its water will descend as a dew; or, if the water surrounding one particle of air comes in contact with the water

surrounding another, they coalesce and form a drop, and we have rain.

24. The sun supplies (or seems to supply) common fire to vapors, whether raised from earth or sea.

25. Those vapors, which have both common and electrical fire in them, are better supported than those which have only common fire in them; for when vapors rise into the coldest region above the earth, the cold will not diminish the electrical fire, if it doth the

common.

26. Hence clouds, formed by vapors raised from fresh waters within land, from growing vegetables, moist earth, &c., more speedily and easily deposite their water, having but little electrical fire to repel and keep the particles separate. So that the greatest part of the water raised from the land, is let fall on the land again; and winds blowing from the land to the sea are dry, there being little use for rain on the sea, and to rob the land of its moisture, in order to rain on the sea, would not appear reasonable.

27. But clouds, formed by vapors raised from the sea, having both fires, and particularly a great quantity of the electrical, support their water strongly, raise it high, and being moved by winds, may bring it over the middle of the broadest continent from the middle of the widest ocean.

28. How these ocean clouds, so strongly supporting their water, are made to deposite it on the land where it is wanted, is next to be considered.

29. If they are driven by winds against mountains, those mountains, being less electrified, attract them, and on contact take away their electrical fire, (and, being cold, the common fire also); hence the particles close towards the mountains and towards each other. If the air was not much loaded, it only falls in dews on the

mountain tops and sides, forms springs, and descends to the vales in rivulets, which, united, make larger streams and rivers. If much loaded, the electrical fire is at once taken from the whole cloud; and, in leaving it, flashes brightly and cracks loudly; the particles instantly coalescing for want of that fire, and falling in a heavy shower.

30. When a ridge of mountains thus dams the clouds, and draws the electrical fire from the cloud first approaching it; that which next follows, when it comes near the first cloud, now deprived of its fire, flashes into it, and begins to deposite its own water; the first cloud again flashing into the mountains; the third approaching cloud, and all succeeding ones, acting in the same manner as far back as they extend, which may be over many hundred miles of country.

31. Hence the continual storms of rain, thunder, and lightning on the east side of the Andes, which, running north and south, and being vastly high, intercept all the clouds brought against them from the Atlantic ocean by the trade winds, and oblige them to deposite their waters, by which the vast rivers Amazons, La Plata, and Oroonoko are formed, which return the water into the same sea, after having fertilized a country of very great extent.

32. If a country be plain, having no mountains to intercept the electrified clouds, yet it is not without means to make them deposite their water. For, if an electrified cloud, coming from the sea, meets in the air a cloud raised from the land, and therefore not electrified, the first will flash its fire into the latter, and thereby both clouds shall be made suddenly to deposite water.

33. The electrified particles of the first cloud close when they lose their fire; the particles of the other