A rather ludicrous incident, and which gave rise to a great deal of scientific tournamenting, added to the celebrity of Franklin’s little book on the continent of Europe. The greatest of French electricians, Abbé Nollet, a man of acknowledged merit, but inordinately vain, was mystified in believing that the pamphlet which caused such an immense stir at court and among the public was not the production of the obscure man Franklin of Philadelphia, but got up among his enemies in England and France, to rob him of his reputation. With this belief fixed in his mind, he sat down at his desk to write a series of letters intended to demolish the man of Philadelphia, and proving, entirely to his own satisfaction, first, that Franklin did not exist at all; secondly, that he had no right to exist; and thirdly, that all his pretended discoveries were mere dreams. Not long after the publication of his letters, the wrathful Abbé received undoubted proofs from America that at Philadelphia there was a man called Franklin, who himself mildly asserted his right not only to live, but to make experiments in electricity. Poor Abbé Nollet felt his humiliation all the more keenly as holding the post of preceptor in Natural Philosophy to the royal family of France, and he had to suffer from a ‘burst of inextinguishable laughter’ at one of his appearances at court. If Count de Buffon did great service to electrical science by getting Franklin’s pamphlet translated into French, he did still more by instigating a series of experiments tending to verify the great theory put forward in the pamphlet, that lightning could be drawn from the clouds by means of pointed iron rods. By his prompting, several gentlemen interested in scientific pursuits engaged upon trials to this effect, among them two persons of note, M. Dalibard and M. de Lor. The first-named had the good fortune to be successful, and thereby to hand his name down to posterity. A wealthy man of science, M. Dalibard was in the habit of living, during a part of the year, in a handsome country house situated at Marly-la-Ville, about eighteen miles from Paris, on the road to Pontoise. Marly-la-Ville stands on a high plain, some four hundred feet above the sea-level, and the residence of M. Dalibard being situated on the most elevated part of the ground, it formed an excellent place for experiments, and was chosen as such by Count de Buffon. The garden near the house was selected as the best ground for the experiments. A wooden scaffolding was built up to hold in its midst an iron rod, eighty feet long, and slightly over an inch in diameter. On the top of the rod was fastened a piece of polished steel, sharply pointed, and bronzed to prevent rust. The iron rod entered, five feet from the ground, into another thinner one, running horizontally towards an electrical apparatus, fastened to a table in a kind of sentry-box, erected on purpose for observations. It was M.