For the unintelligibleness; give this whole song to any taught singer, and let her sing it to any company that have never heard it; you shall find they will not understand three words in ten. It is therefore, that, at the oratorios and operas, one sees with books in their hands all those who desire to understand what they hear sung by even our best performers.

For the tautology; you have, with their vain mysterious art, twice repeated; magic charms can ne'er relieve you, three times. Nor can heal the wounded heart, three times. Godlike wisdom from above, twice; and, this alone can ne'er deceive you, two or three times. But this is reasonable when compared with the Monster Polypheme, the Monster Polypheme, a hundred times over and over, in his admired Acis and Galatea.

As to the screaming; perhaps I cannot find a fair instance in this song; but whoever has frequented our operas will remember many. And yet here methinks the words no and e'er, when sung to these notes, have a little of the air of screaming, and would actually be screamed by some singers.

I send you enclosed the song with its music at length. Read the words without the repetitions. Observe how few they are, and what a shower of notes attend them; you will then perhaps be inclined to think with me, that, though the words might be the principal part of an ancient song, they are of small importance in a modern one; they are in short only a pretence for singing.

I am, as ever,

Your affectionate brother,

B. FRANKLIN.

P. S. I might have mentioned inarticulation among the defects in common speech, that are assumed as beauties in modern singing. But, as that seems more the fault of the singer than of the composer, I omitted it in what related merely to the composition. The fine singer, in the present mode, stifles all the hard consonants, and polishes away all the rougher parts of words that serve to distinguish them one from another; so that you hear nothing but an admirable pipe, and understand no more of the song, than you would from its tune played on any other instrument. If ever it was the ambition of musicians to make instruments that should imitate the human voice, that ambition seems now reversed, the voice aiming to be like an instrument. Thus wigs were first made to imitate a good natural head of hair; but when they became fashionable, though in unnatural forms, we have seen natural hair dressed to look like wigs.

FROM JOSEPH PRIESTLEY TO B. FRANKLIN.

Relating to a History of Electricity. History of Electricity. Curious Experiments with an Electrified Chain.

DEAR SIR,

Warrington, 21 September, 1766.

I wrote to Mr. Price last post, in which I desired him to remind you of your promise to procure me Beccaria's work, which you said you thought you could do of M. Delaval. Fearing he might not see you soon, I write to desire you to get it for me if possible, without loss of time. Otherwise, I must reserve his experiments for an Appendix; for, by the references I meet with to them, I find my book absolutely must not come 35

VOL. VI.

abroad without them. I am in such haste, as we have already begun to print, and have done five sheets.* The whole work will make betwixt four hundred and five hundred pages quarto, and we shall not have done quite so soon as Christmas. For the same reason, I must beg you would also send me, as soon as you conveniently can, the two last numbers of the work which I left in the hands of Dr. Watson to be transmitted to you. I am now wholly employed in revising and correcting. I defer drawing up the account of my own experiments, till I have some more in pursuance of them and several others. In about a week I shall betake myself to experiments in good earnest; but I have no expectation of doing much more than I have done. Upon Mr. Price's letter I sent the mark that was actually made by a chain, when a discharge was sent through it. I have several times since I came home got three and almost always two concentric circles, upon the metal knobs with which I make discharges. If I verify your experiments on the electrified cup and animal fluids, may I publish them as yours in some proper place in my work? I shall soon go about them. Have you procured the list of books written on the subject of electricity, or the remainder of Wilkes's Treatise? Dr. Watson has sent me a curious tract of Johannes Franciscus Agua, which I am now digesting. In your note on one of my numbers you say, you question whether an aolipile will turn the same way, whether it draw in or throw out the water. I had tried it before I wrote the paragraph; you may depend upon the fact. I hope to find more of your excellent remarks upon the two numbers in your hands. I am, dear Sir, &c.

JOSEPH PRIESTLEY.

Priestley was now engaged in writing his History of Electricity, which was the work here alluded to. - EDITOR.

P. S. Since I wrote the letter, I made a discharge through a chain, that lay on this side of it. At the moment of the discharge, the whole appeared like a bright flame. From a, where the chain was returned, it was thrown back as far as b. I have tried the same several times since, laying one half of a chain parallel to the other, and marking exactly how far it reached upon the table; and always found the middle part pulled back about one inch and a half, as if a sudden jerk had been given to it. Indeed it was manifest, by comparing the link with the mark, that every link had moved a little. Must not that have been effected by the links repelling one another while the stroke was passing? Is not the paper really burnt? Was not the chain made superficially hot? And does not the electric shock pass chiefly over the surfaces of bodies? so that small bodies will be melted, because they have most surface in proportion to their bulk. The faint marks at a distance from the rest are not made by handling. They are just as the discharge left them. Indeed you will find they are not easily effaced. The wire of the chain is not so thick as the marks.*

TO GEORGE CROGHAN.

Conjecture as to Elephants being Natives of America.

SIR,

London, 5 August, 1767.

I return you many thanks for the box of elephants' tusks and grinders. They are extremely curious on

* On the face of the original letter, from which the above has been copied, the marks of the chain are still distinctly visible as here described, it being seventy-one years since the experiment was performed. The marks are of a yellowish green color. - EDITOR.

many accounts; no living elephants having been seen in any part of America by any of the Europeans settled there, or remembered in any tradition of the Indians. It is also puzzling to conceive what should have brought so many of them to die on the same spot; and that no such remains should be found in any other part of the continent, except in that very distant country, Peru, from whence some grinders of the same kind formerly brought, are now in the museum of the Royal Society. The tusks agree with those of the African and Asiatic elephant in being nearly of the same form and texture, and some of them, notwithstanding the length of time they must have lain, being still good ivory. But the grinders differ, being full of knobs, like the grinders of a carnivorous animal; when those of the elephant, who eats only vegetables, are almost smooth. But then we know of no other animal with tusks like an elephant, to whom such grinders might belong.

It is remarkable, that elephants now inhabit naturally only hot countries where there is no winter, and yet these remains are found in a winter country; and it is no uncommon thing to find elephants' tusks in Siberia, in great quantities, when their rivers overflow, and wash away the earth, though Siberia is still more a wintry country than that on the Ohio; which looks as if the earth had anciently been in another position,. and the climates differently placed from what they are at present.

With great regard, I am, Sir,

Your most obedient humble servant,

B. FRANKLIN.*

* The bones referred to in this letter were presented by Dr. Franklin to the Royal Society. In the Philosophical Transactions, (Vol. LVII, p. 464,) they are described in a paper communicated by Mr. Peter Collin