=A.D. 1745.=--Dr. Miles (Rev. Henry), of Tooting, D.D. (1698–1763) reads, March 7, before the English Royal Society a paper indicating the possibility of kindling phosphorus by applying to it an excited electric without the approach of a conducting body. This gentleman’s tube happening to be in excellent order upon this occasion, he observed, and doubtless was the first to notice, _pencils of luminous rays_, which he called _coruscations_, darting from the tube without the aid of any conductor approaching it. In a paper which Dr. Miles read before the same Society on the 25th of January, 1746, he gave an account of other equally interesting experiments, one of which was the kindling of ordinary lamp spirits with a piece of black sealing wax excited by dry flannel or white and brown paper. REFERENCES.--“Dict. Nat. Biog.,” Sidney Lee, Vol. XXXVII. p. 378; _Phil. Trans._, Vol. XLIII. pp. 290, 441; Vol. XLIV. pp. 27, 53, 78, 158, and the following abridgments: Hutton, Vol. IX. pp. 107, 136, 191, 198, 207, 213, 232; John Martyn, Vol. X. part ii. pp. 272, 277, 317, 319, 322–323, 325. =A.D. 1745.=--This period was to witness a discovery which, according to Professor Tyndall, “_throws all former ones in the shade_,” and which Dr. Priestley calls “_the most surprising yet made in the whole business of electricity_.” This was the accumulation of the electric power in a glass phial, called the Leyden jar after the name of the place where the discovery was made. It was first announced in a letter to Von Kleist, dean of the cathedral of Kamin--Cammin--in Pomerania, dated the 4th of November, 1745, and addressed to Dr. Lieberkühn, who communicated it to the Berlin Academy. The following is an extract: “When a nail or a piece of thick brass wire is put into a small apothecary’s phial and electrified, remarkable effects follow; but the phial must be very dry or warm; I commonly rub it over beforehand with a finger, on which I put some pounded chalk. If a little mercury, or a few drops of spirit of wine, be put into it, the experiment succeeds the better. As soon as this phial and nail are removed from the electrifying glass, or the prime conductor to which it has been exposed is taken away, it throws out a pencil of flame so long that, with this burning machine in my hand, I have taken above sixty steps in walking about my room; when it is electrified strongly I can take it into another room and there fire spirits of wine with it. If while it is electrifying I put my finger, or a piece of gold which I hold in my hand, to the nail, I receive a shock which stuns my arms and shoulders.”