The earliest published work in which the electric properties of tourmaline are noted appears to be an anonymous or quasi anonymous treatise published in 1707, certain initial letters of the quaint title being italicized to indicate the initials of the author’s name.[96] The first scientist to derive the action of the so-called _Aschentrekker_ or “Ash-Attractor” from electric energy is said to have been the great Linnæus, who bestowed upon the tourmaline the name of the “Electrical Stone.”[97] The attractive properties of the tourmaline are said to have been first brought to scientific notice by M. Louis Lémery, in a report made during 1717 to the French Academy of Sciences; however, Lémery was inclined to attribute them to magnetic influence. That these phenomena of attraction and repulsion were really due to the electric properties of the stone was first clearly brought out by the German physicist, Franz Ulrich Theodor Aepinus, and his conclusions were communicated to the Berlin Academy of Sciences in 1756.[98] Aepinus made his experiments upon two specimens of tourmaline from Ceylon, which had been furnished him by Lehmann, a fellow-member of the Berlin Academy, who, as Aepinus frankly admits, first drew his attention to the electric action of the stone. That not only friction but heat also should develop the electric energy, both positive and negative, of the tourmaline, serves to differentiate it from many other potentially electric substances, in the case of which friction alone is effective. [Illustration: A SIMPLE APPARATUS FOR ILLUSTRATING THE ELECTRIC PROPERTIES OF THE TOURMALINE The stone is suspended from a hollow rod and will be attracted by the finger, if the latter be brought within a short distance of the tourmaline. When the stone has been slightly heated, its positive electricity will draw toward it the heart-shaped piece of paper, just as amber attracts paper, or magnetic iron does iron filings. ]