A very interesting anticipation of Galvani's original experiment, made long before his time by a great naturalist, the story of which serves to show that discoveries made before their time, that is, before people are ready to follow them up, fail to attract attention, has been called to my attention by Brother Potamian. In the second volume of the Dutch Naturalist Swammerdam's Works, page 839, is to be found the following passage:[14] "Another experiment that is at once very curious and suggestive can be made if one separates the largest of the muscles of the thigh of the frog and so prepares it with its adherent nerve as to leave it unhurt. If after this has been done you take the tendons of this muscle, one in each hand, and irritate the hanging nerve by a little forceps or other instrument, the muscle will recover the former motion which it had lost. You will see at once that it contracts and that there will be an effort as it were to bring together the two hands which hold its tendons. This I demonstrated, in the year 1658, to the illustrious Duke of Tuscany then reigning, when he was at the moment in a state of mind that prompted him not to favor me. This same experiment can be repeated with the same muscle as often and for as long a time as any portion of the nerve remains uninjured, so that we may, therefore, irritate the muscle to its former contraction as often as we wish." As a foundation classic in electricity, Galvani's De Viribus Electricitatis deserves more detailed analysis. The first part of the monograph is taken up with experiments of many kinds, with what may be called artificial sources of electricity--the electric machine, the Leyden jar, and other modes of electrical development. The second part treats of the effects of atmospheric electricity upon muscular motion, by which expression Galvani means lightning, though he also observed various electrical manifestations in the muscles of his frogs when there was no actual lightning but only darkening of the heavens, without actual passage of the current flash from one cloud to another or from the clouds to the earth. In this matter, Galvani displayed quite as much courage as patient observation. He knew the fate of Richmann, the Russian scientist, who had been struck dead by a lightning-bolt while making experiments not very different, yet he dared to place a lightning conductor on the highest point of his house, and to this conductor he attached a wire, which ran down to his laboratory. During a storm, he suspended on this metallic circuit, by means of their sciatic nerves, frogs' legs and the legs of other animals prepared for the purpose. To the feet of the animals he attached another Wire sufficiently long to reach down to the bottom of a well, thus grounding the circuit.