The idea was regarded with similar prejudice by scientific men until Benjamin Franklin had his attention called to it, as he thus narrates:—“In 1757, being at sea in a fleet of ninety-six sail, bound for Louisbourg, I observed the wakes of two of the ships to be remarkably smooth, while all the others were ruffled by the wind, which blew fresh. Being puzzled with the differing appearance, I at last pointed it out to the captain, and asked him the meaning of it. ‘The cooks,’ said he, ‘have, I suppose, been just emptying their greasy water through the scuppers, which has greased the sides of the ships a little.’ And this answer he gave me with an air of some little contempt, as to a person ignorant of what everybody else knew. In my own mind, I first slighted the solution, though I was not able to think of another.” Franklin was not a man to remain prejudiced; he accordingly investigated the subject, and the results of his experiments, made upon a pond on Clapham Common, were communicated to the Royal Society. He states that after dropping a little oil on the water, “I saw it spread itself with surprising swiftness upon the surface, but the effect of smoothing the waves was not produced; for I had applied it first upon the leeward side of the pond, where the waves were largest, and the wind drove my oil back upon the shore. I then went to the windward side, where they began to form; and there the oil, though not more than a teaspoonful, produced an instant calm over a space several yards square, which spread amazingly, and extended itself gradually till it reached the lee side, making all that quarter of the pond (perhaps half an acre) as smooth as a looking-glass.” Franklin made further experiments at the entrance of Portsmouth Harbor, opposite the Haslar Hospital, in company with Sir Joseph Banks, Dr. Blagden, and Dr. Solander. In these experiments the waves were not destroyed, but were converted into gentle swelling undulations with smooth surfaces. Thus it appeared that the oil destroys small waves, but not large billows. Franklin’s explanation is, “that the wind blowing over water covered with a film of oil cannot easily _catch_ upon it, so as to raise the first wrinkles, but slides over it and leaves it smooth as it finds it.”