the electrical fire silently out of a cloud before it came nigh enough to strike, and thereby secure us from that most sudden and terrible mischief?" Franklin goes on to suggest the possibility of obtaining electricity from the clouds by means of a pointed rod fixed on the top of a high building and insulated. Such a rod he afterwards erected in his own house. Another rod connected to the earth he brought within six inches of it, and, attaching a small bell to each rod, he suspended a little ball or clapper by a silk thread, so that it could strike either bell when attracted to it. On the approach of a thunder-cloud, and occasionally when no clouds were near, the bells would ring, indicating that the rod had become strongly electrified. On one occasion Franklin was disturbed by a loud noise, and, coming out of his bedroom, he found an apparently continuous and very luminous discharge taking place between the bells, forming a stream of fire about as large as a pencil. A very pretty experiment of Franklin's was that of the _golden fish_. A small piece of gold-leaf is cut into a quadrilateral having one of its angles about 150 deg., the opposite angle about 30 deg., and the other two right angles. "If you take it by the tail, and hold it at a foot or greater horizontal distance from the prime conductor, it will, when let go, fly to it with a brisk but wavering motion, like that of an eel through the water; it will then take place under the prime conductor, at perhaps a quarter or half an inch distance, and keep a continual shaking of its tail like a fish, so that it seems animated. Turn its tail towards the prime conductor, and then it flies to your finger, and seems to nibble it. And if you hold a [pewter] plate under it at six or eight inches distance, and cease turning the globe, when the electrical atmosphere of the conductor grows small it will descend to the plate and swim back again several times with the same fish-like motion; greatly to the entertainment of spectators. By a little practice in blunting or sharpening the heads or tails of these figures, you may make them take place as desired, nearer or further from the electrified plate." By the discharge of the battery, Franklin succeeded in melting and volatilizing gold-leaf, thin strips of tinfoil, etc. His views on the nature of light are best given in his own words. "I am not satisfied with the doctrine that supposes particles of matter called light, continually driven off from the sun's surface, with a swiftness so prodigious! Must not the smallest particle conceivable have, with such a motion, a force exceeding that of a twenty-four pounder discharged from a cannon?... Yet these particles, with this amazing motion, will not drive before them, or remove, the least and lightest dust they meet with.