Gravesande taught publicly on the Continent the philosophy of Newton, and, by so doing, was one of the first to bring about a revolution in the domain of physical sciences generally. His original “Physices Elementa Mathematica,” as well as his “Philosophiæ Newtonianæ,” etc., and “Introductio ad Philosophiam,” etc., were respectively published at Leyden in 1720, 1723 and 1736. REFERENCE.--Houzeau et Lancaster, “Bibl. Générale,” Vol. II. p. 252. =A.D. 1746.=--Nollet (Jean Antoine), a distinguished French philosopher (1700–1770), to whom was given the title of Abbé while holding deacon’s orders, is the first in France to make experiments with the Leyden jar. While in Paris he applied himself to electrical studies in company with Charles Dufay (already noticed at A.D. 1733), and made such ingenious experiments that René de Réaumur allowed him the free use of his extensive apparatus and laboratory. During the month of April 1746, he transmitted, in the presence of the French King, an electrical shock from a small phial through a chain of one hundred and eighty of the Royal Guards, and at the Carthusian Convent, not long afterward, he sent a shock through a line of monks stretched a distance of over a mile, causing them all to experience instantaneously the same sensation. Nollet’s work, “Essai sur l’électricité des corps,” was originally published at Paris in 1746. He was the first to observe that pointed bodies electrified give out streams of light (the smallest points displaying “brushes of electric light”), but that they do not exhibit as powerful indications of electricity as are shown by blunt bodies. He also found that glass and other non-conductors are more strongly excited in air than _in vacuo_; that the electric spark is more diffuse and unbroken _in vacuo_; and that an excited tube loses none of its electricity by being placed in the focus of a concave mirror when the sunlight is therein concentrated. His experiments upon the evaporation of fluids by electricity, as well as upon the electrification of capillary tubes full of water (observed also by Boze), and upon the electrification of plants and animals, are detailed in his “Recherches,” etc., pp. 327, 351, 354–356, while his observations upon the electrical powers of different kinds of glass are given in the sixth volume of the “Leçons de Physique Expérimentale,” issued in 1764.