To determine the question, whether the clouds that contain lightning are electrified or not, I would propose an experiment to be tried where it may be done conveniently. On the top of some high tower or steeple, place a kind of sentry-box, ... big enough to contain a man and an electrical stand. From the middle of the stand let an iron rod rise and pass bending out of the door, and then upright twenty or thirty feet, pointed very sharp at the end. If the electrical stand be kept clean and dry, a man standing on it, when such clouds are passing low, might be electrified and afford sparks, the rod drawing fire to him from a cloud. If any danger to the man should be apprehended (though I think there would be none), let him stand on the floor of his box, and now and then bring near to the rod the loop of wire that has one end fastened to the leads, he holding it by a wax handle, so the sparks, if the rod is electrified, will strike from the rod to the wire, and not affect him. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 12: From Franklin’s correspondence with Peter Collinson, July 29, 1750. _Works of Benjamin Franklin_, Philadelphia, 1809, Vol. III, pp. 45-49.] XI LINNAEUS 1707-1778 _Carl von Linné [Linnaeus] was born May 13, 1707, at Rashult in Smaland, Sweden. At the age of four he showed a precocious interest in plants, an interest which seriously interfered with his studies when he went to school. When his father was about to remove him, a friend urged that the boy be fitted for the profession of medicine. Linnaeus entered the university at Lund in 1727, but in the following year transferred to Upsala. In 1732, at the expense of the Academy of Sciences, he explored Lapland. Later he made pilgrimages to many of the most eminent professors of Europe, returning to Stockholm in 1738. After his marriage, in 1739, he was appointed professor at Upsala, where he continued his work in botany and established it on a rational basis. He died January 10, 1778, noted as one of the foremost botanists of his time, having discovered sex in plants and given his name to a famous botanical system of classification._ THE SEX OF PLANTS[13]