they furnish'd themselves, so that we had at length several
performers. Among these, the principal was Mr. Kinnersley, an
ingenious neighbour, who, being out of business, I encouraged to
undertake showing the experiments for money, and drew up for him two
lectures, in which the experiments were rang'd in such order, and
accompanied with such explanations in such method, as that the
foregoing should assist in comprehending the following. He procur'd an
elegant apparatus for the purpose, in which all the little machines
that I had roughly made for myself were nicely form'd by
instrument-makers. His lectures were well attended, and gave great
satisfaction; and after some time he went thro' the colonies,
exhibiting them in every capital town, and pick'd up some money. In
the West India islands, indeed, it was with difficulty the experiments
could be made, from the general moisture of the air.

Oblig'd as we were to Mr. Collinson for his present of the tube, etc.,
I thought it right he should be inform'd of our success in using it,
and wrote him several letters containing accounts of our experiments.
He got them read in the Royal Society, where they were not at first
thought worth so much notice as to be printed in their Transactions.
One paper, which I wrote for Mr. Kinnersley, on the sameness of
lightning with electricity,[107] I sent to Dr. Mitchel, an acquaintance
of mine, and one of the members also of that society, who wrote me
word that it had been read, but was laughed at by the connoisseurs.
The papers, however, being shown to Dr. Fothergill, he thought them of
too much value to be stifled, and advis'd the printing of them. Mr.
Collinson then gave them to _Cave_ for publication in his Gentleman's
Magazine; but he chose to print them separately in a pamphlet, and Dr.
Fothergill wrote the preface. Cave, it seems, judged rightly for his
profit, for by the additions that arrived afterward, they swell'd to a
quarto volume, which has had five editions, and cost him nothing for
copy-money.

[107] See page 327.

It was, however, some time before those papers were much taken notice
of in England. A copy of them happening to fall into the hands of the
Count de Buffon,[108] a philosopher deservedly of great reputation in
France, and, indeed, all over Europe, he prevailed with M. Dalibard[109]
to translate them into French, and they were printed at Paris. The
publication offended the Abbe Nollet, preceptor in Natural Ph