Mr. Sellers was a sensible and ingenious country-gentleman, possessed of some skill in mathematical and astronomical science. Messrs. John and Israel Jacobs (whose sister was the second wife of Mr. Rittenhouse) were also well-informed country-gentlemen: the former was speaker of the general assembly of Pennsylvania, and the latter a member of congress, after the revolution. Mr. James Wright was a very respectable representative of the county of Lancaster, before the revolution. The gentlemen named in the committee of the general assembly, to treat with Mr. Rittenhouse for the purchase of an Orrery for the use of the public, were likewise conspicuous for their worth. Of these, Mr. Rhoads was one of the vice-presidents of the American Philosophical Society, and Mr. Morton, a judge of the supreme court of Pennsylvania, before the revolution: both were afterwards members of congress. ----- The various agitations which the public mind underwent in this country, in the succeeding four years, in consequence of its disputes with the parent state, and until the commencement of hostilities between the two countries, seem to place Mr. Rittenhouse more out of view for some time, with respect to any public employments. Then, all classes of people appeared to have become Politicians. The interests of Literature were neglected; Science, abstracted from Politics, was little cultivated; and all other considerations were, in general, apparently absorbed in the views which the American people entertained of their public affairs, and in the prosecution of measures, adapted either for the obtaining a redress of the then existing grievances, or to meet the possible contingency of an adverse event. There was, in fact, for about four years preceding the year 1775, a great interruption, sometimes an almost total suspension, in the American colonies of Great Britain, of all pursuits, except the ordinary and indispensable ones of Industry and Commerce. Yet about the commencement of this period, (viz. in the summer of 1771,) Mr. Rittenhouse was engaged with Mr. Kinnersley and some other gentlemen, several days successively, in making a series of experiments at Philadelphia, on the Gymnotus Electricus, or Electric Eel; for the purpose of ascertaining the nature of the faculty by which this fish is enabled, on being touched, to impart a shock, very similar in sensation to that produced by the electric fluid. An account of these experiments was long afterwards communicated by Mr. Rittenhouse to Professor Barton of Philadelphia, and will be found in the first volume of his _Philadelphia Medical and Physical Journal_.