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wind of a thunder-gust without tearing. To the top of the upright stick of the cross is to be fixed a very sharp-pointed wire, rising a foot or more above the wood. To the end of the twine, next the hand, is to be tied a silk ribbon; and where the twine and silk join, a key may be fastened.

The kite is to be raised when a thunder-gust appears to be coming on, and the person who holds the string must stand within a door, or window, or under some cover, so that the silk ribbon may not be wet; and care must be taken that the twine does not touch the frame of the door or window. As soon as any of the thunder clouds come over the kite, the pointed wire will draw the electric fire from them; and the kite, with all the twine, will be electrified; and the loose filaments of the twine will stand out every way, and be attracted by an approaching finger.

When the rain has wet the kite and twine, so that it can conduct the electric fire freely, you will find it stream out plentifully from the key on the approach of your knuckle. At this key the phial may be charged; and from electric fire thus obtained spirits may be kindled, and all the other electrical experiments be performed, which are usually done. by the help of a rubbed glass globe or tube, and thus the sameness of the electric matter with that of lightning is completely demonstrated.

Of the great Alterations which the Islands of Scilly have undergone since the Time of the Ancients. By the Rev. Mr. WILLIAM BORLASE.-[1753.]

THE inhabitants of these isles are all new-comers; there is not here an old habitation worth notice; nor any remains of Phenician, Grecian, or Roman art, either in town, castle, port, temple, or sepulchre. All the antiquities are of the rudest Druid times; and, if borrowed in any measure from those eastern traders before mentioned, were borrowed from their most ancient and simple rites.

How came these ancient inhabitants, then, it may be asked, to vanish, so as that the present have no pretensions to any affinity or connection of any kind with them, either in blood, language, or customs? How came they to disappear, and leave so few traces of trade, riches, or arts, and no posterity, that we can learn, behind them? Two causes of this fact occurred while Mr. B. was at Scilly, which may perhaps satisfy these enquiries; the manifest encroachments of the sea, and as manifest a subsidence of some parts of the land.

The sea is the insatiable monster, which devours these little islands, gorges itself with the earth, sand, clay, and all the yielding parts, and leaves nothing, where it can reach, but the skeleton, the bared rock. The continual advances which the sea makes on the low lands are obvious, and within the last 30 years have been very considerable. What we see happening every day may assure us of what has happened in former times; and from the banks of sand and earth giving way to the sea, and the breaches becoming still more open, and irrecoverable, it appears that repeated tempests have occasioned a gradual dissolution of the solids for many ages, and as gradual progressive ascendency of the fluids.

On shifting of the sands in the channel, walls and ruins are frequently seen there are several phenomena of the same nature, and owing to the same cause, to be seen on these shores. Here, then, we have the foundations, which were probably six feet above high-water mark, now 10 feet under, which together make a difference as to the level of 16 feet. To account for this, the slow advances and depredations of the sea will by no means suffice; we must either allow, that the lands inclosed by these fences have sunk so much lower than they were before, or else we must allow, that since these lands were inclosed, the whole ocean has been raised 16 feet perpendicular; which last will appear much the harder and less tenable supposition of the two. Here then was a great subsidence; the land between Sampson and Trescaw sunk at least 16 feet, at a moderate computation. This subsidence must have been followed by a sudden inundation, and this inundation is likely not only to have destroyed a great part of the inhabitants, but to have terrified others who survived into a total desertion of their shattered islands. By this means, as I imagine, that considerable people, who were the aborigines, and carried on the tin trade with the Phenicians, Greeks, and Romans, were extirpated..

Tradition seems to confirm this; there being a strong persuation in the western parts of Cornwall, that formerly there existed a large country between the Land's End and Scilly, now laid many fathoms under water. The particular arguments by which they support this tradition may be seen in Mr. Carew's Survey of Cornwall, and in the last edition of Camden.

But though there are no evidences to be depended on, of any ancient connection of the Land's End and Scilly, yet that the cause of that inundation, which destroyed much of these islands, might reach also to the Cornish shores is extremely

probable, there being several evidences of a like subsidence of the land in Mount's Bay.

Account of the Death of Mr. GEORGE WILLIAM RICHMAN, Professor of Experimental Philosophy, and a Member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences at Petersburgh. [1755.]

In order to demonstrate what Mr. R. might advance in an intended discourse on electricity with the greater certainty, he neglected no opportunity, on the appearance of a thundercloud, diligently to discover its strength. Bars were standing for this purpose always on the roof of the house. These received the electrical power of the clouds, and imparted it to certain chains fastened to them; by which it was conducted into one of his rooms, where his apparatus was. He was attending the usual meeting of the Academy the 26th of July, 1753, a little before noon, when it thundered at a pretty distance, the sky being clear, and the sun shining. On this he hastened home, in hopes of confirming his former observations, or possibly enabling himself to make new ones.

The engraver Sokolow, who had the care of his treatise, accompanied him, to make himself the better acquainted with the chief circumstances of the electrical experiment, in order to be enabled to represent it more justly on a copper-plate. Mr. Richman carried the engraver immediately to his apparatus, taking notice of the degree of electricity on his bar, which was then only four; and by which it appeared that his bar had received very little from the thunder. He described to Mr. Sokolow the dangerous consequences which would attend the electrical power being increased to the 45th, or more degrees of his expositor.

In the mean time the misfortune happened, about half an hour after noon, which cost Professor Richman his life. A thick cloud, that came from the north-east, and seemed to float very low in the air, was taken notice of by people walking in the street; and these affirm, that they could plainly see, on the subsequent flash of lightning, and peal of thunder, a quantity of vaporous matter issue from it, which diffused itself in the circumjacent space.

According to the account of the engraver Sokolow, Mr. Richman inclined his head towards the expositor, to ob serve what degree of force it would have; and while he stood in that bent posture, a great white and bluish fire appeared between the electrical expositor and Mr. Richman's head. At the same time arose à sort of stream, or vapour, which

entirely benumbed the engraver, and made him sink down on the ground; so that he cannot remember to have heard the loud thunder-clap.

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The particulars, which happened to Mr. Richman, Mr. Sokolow is ignorant of. As soon as he had recovered his senses, he got up, and ran out of the house, acquainting every one whom he met in the street, that the thunder had struck into into Mr. Richman's house. On the other side, as soon as Mrs. Richman heard the very loud stroke of thunder, she came hastening into the chamber, in which she conjectured she should see the bad consequences. She found her husband past sensation, sitting upon a chest, which happened to be placed behind him, and leaning against the wall; which situation must have been occasioned by his falling back on receiving the electrical blow. He was no sooner struck than killed. There was not the least appearance of life. A sulphureous smell, not unlike that which is caused by the explosion of gunpowder, diffused itself through the whole house. Some servants, who were hard by in the kitchen, felt its effects, being quite stupified. The electrical expositor stood on a low buffet, upon which was likewise placed a China bowl that was cracked; and there was such a shaking in the house, that the shock even stopped the movement of an English clock, or pendulum, which was in an adjoining room. other consequences were observed in the house. But we have found another effect of the force of electricity, or of thunderbolts, discoverable by the door-posts of the house; for they were rent asunder lengthwise, and the door, with that part of the posts, so torn away, twirled into the porch. The reason of which appears to be, because one of the above-mentioned chains, that were carried from the bars at the house-top to the expositor, passed very near them; and the kitchen-door, being at a little distance off, had a splinter torn out, and dashed against a staircase, that went towards the top of the house; so that part of the electrical matter seems to have taken its course this way, but without doing any more damage. They opened a vein of the breathless body twice, but no blood followed.. They endeavoured to recover sensation by violent chafing, but in vain. On turning the corpse topsyturvy, during the rubbing, an inconsiderable quantity of blood fell out of the mouth. There appeared a red spot on the forehead, from which spirted some drops of blood through the pores, without wounding the skin. The shoe belonging to the left foot was burst open. Uncovering the foot at that place, they found a blue mark, by which it is concluded, that

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the electrical force of, the thunder having passed into the head, made its way out again at the foot. On the body, particularly on the left side, were several red and blue spots, resembling leather shrunk by being burnt. Many more blue spots were afterwards visible over the whole body, and in particular on the back. That on the forehead changed to a brownish red. The hair of the head was not singed, though the spot touched some of it. In the place where the shoe was unripped, the stocking was entire; as was his coat every where, the waistcoat being only singed on the fore flap, where it joined the hinder. But there appeared on the back of the engraver's coat long narrow streaks, as if red-hot wires had burnt off the nap.

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On the Books and Ancient Writings dug out of the Ruins of an Edifice near the Site of the old City of Herculaneum. WITHIN two years last past, in a chamber of a house, or more properly speaking, of an ancient villa, in the middle of a garden, has been found a great quantity of rolls, about a palm long, and round; which appeared like roots of wood, all black, and seeming to be only of one piece. One of them falling on the ground, it broke in the middle, and many letters were observed, by which it was first known, that the rolls were of papyrus. The number of these rolls were about 150, of different sizes. They were in wooden cases, which are so much burnt, as are all the things made of wood, that they cannot be recovered. The rolls, however, are hard, though each appears like one piece. The King has caused infinite pains to be taken to unroll them, and read them; but all attempts were in vain; only by slitting some of them some words were observed.

At length Sig. Assemani, being come a second time to Naples, proposed to the King to send for one Father Antonio, a writer at the Vatican, as the only man in the world who could undertake this difficult affair. It is incredible to imagine what this man contrived and executed. He made a machine, with which, by the means of certain threads, which being gummed, stuck to the back part of the papyrus, where there was no writing, he begins, by degrees, to pull, while with a sort of engraver's instrument he loosens one leaf from the other, which is the most difficult part of all, and then makes a sort of lining to the back of the papyrus, with exceedingly thin leaves of onion, if I mistake not, and with some spirituous liquor, with which he wets the papyrus, by

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