368 NOTES—ORIGINAL AND SELECTED.
driest areas relative to the average, and probably the driest
absolutely for the year, seem to have been in, Norfolk and in a
narrow strip running from south of Leicester through Lincoln
to Hull. Here the excess was under 10 per cent." Dr. Mill
states that "Over the British Isles as a whole the rainfall was
certainly considerably more than 25 per cent. above the average,
and England, Scotland, and Ireland differed little in the amount
of the excess."
At Shoeburyness, the only Essex station mentioned, outside
the London district, the rainfall was 29.52 in., the average from
8S70 to 8899 having been 89.75 in. Within the London district
the rainfall at Leyton (Lea-bridge road) in 1903 was 36.64 in. ;
at Greenwich Observatory 3.54 in. ; at Camden Square 388.0 in. ;
and at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Kensington, 42.37 in.—
T.V.H.
MISCELLANEA.
An Early Electrical Experiment in Essex.—The follow-
ing incident in the life of Benjamin Wilson, F.R.S., the celebrated,
portrait-painter, father of General Sir Robert Wilson, may be
of interest1:—"In 1747 Dr. Franklin published his discovery of
the identity of lightning with electricity. Wilson's attention
was immediately awakened. On the occurrence of the first
succeeding thunderstorm he happened to be at the house of a
friend near Chelmsford, in Essex, and at the moment was acting,
with others, one of Shakespeare's plays. He was playing the
part of Henry IV. when the storm came on, and running out in
his royal robes he extemporised an apparatus to test the
discovery—a curtain-rod inserted in a clean, dry quart bottle,
with a pin (or needle) fastened to it at the other end. The bottle
he held in his hand as he stood upon the bowling-green, and the
fluid was collected in the rod so that sparks were drawn from it
by himself and all the rest. On the same day the same effects
were observed by Mr. Canton in London, and this storm was
the first occasion of the experiment being tried in England."
1 Life of General Sir Robert Wilson, by the Rev. Herbert Randolph. 1862, Vol. 1, p. 11.
END OF VOLUME XIII.