With that liberality which distinguishes all truly great minds, Benjamin Franklin did not keep his great discoveries to himself, but communicated them to others in the most open-handed manner. Ever since he had commenced his electrical experiments, he had sent the detailed results of them to his London correspondent, Mr. Peter Collinson, for communication to the Royal Society, and he was not even prevented from continuing the labour of writing long letters by the knowledge of the fact that scant notice was taken of them by the Royal Society. The members of this august learned body, with a few honourable exceptions, seemed unable to hide their contempt for what they considered the dabblings in science of a mere tradesman, living in an obscure little town, in a distant colony. Somebody had mentioned in public that this person, of the name of Franklin, was a dealer in rags and goose-feathers, dwelling among money-worshipping Quakers in the City of Brotherly Love: which naturally was productive of great merriment, but detrimental to scientific respect. Thus, although by the influence of Mr. Collinson and some of his friends, the letters from Philadelphia were read before the Royal Society, they met with scarcely any attention, and the members broadly expressed their disdain of them by refusing to allow their insertion in their ‘Transactions.’ Three whole years elapsed in this way, when at length, in the autumn of 1750, Benjamin Franklin reported to Mr. Collinson his researches on the identity of electricity and lightning, together with his ideas that all damage done by the electric fire descending from the clouds upon the earth might be put a stop to by fixing iron rods, with sharp points, to the summit of buildings, which would thus be protected. He added that he himself intended shortly to verify his conclusions by experiments, but that, in the meanwhile, it would be well if others did the same. Never before, perhaps, was a grand idea thrown out to all the world with more munificence of spirit, and with more entire abnegation of the very thought of self.