ventions, and discoveries, in the former than in the latter.

At the April meeting of 1844, upon the request of the Society, I
delivered at Washington (D. C.) the Introductory Address for the
National Institute, in which, up to that date, an account was given by
me of 'the various improvements and discoveries made by our countrymen
in the inductive sciences.' On reference to that address, which was
published at its date (April, 1844), with their _bulletin_, it will be
seen that, from the great Franklin down to Kinnersley, Fitch, Rumsey,
Fulton, Evans, Rush, the Stevenses of New Jersey, Whitney, Godfrey,
Rittenhouse, Silliman, J. Q. Adams, Cleveland, Adrain, Bowditch, Hare,
Bache, Henry, Pierce, Espy, Patterson, Nulty, Morse, Walker, Loomis,
Rogers, Saxton, and many others; these men, with scarcely an exception,
were from the Free States.

EXTRACT.

And, first, of electricity. This has been cultivated with the greatest
success in our country, from the time when Franklin with his kite drew
down electricity from the thunder cloud, to that when Henry showed the
electrical currents produced by the distant lightning discharge. In
Franklin's day the idea prevailed that there were two kinds of
electricity, one produced by rubbing vitreous substances, the other by
the friction of resinous bodies. Franklin's theory of one electric fluid
in all bodies, disturbed in its equilibrium by friction, and thus
accumulating in one and deserting the other, maintains its ground, still
capable of explaining the facts elicited in the progress of modern
discovery. Franklin believed that electricity and lightning were the
same, and proceeded to the proof. He made the perilous experiment, by
exploring the air with a kite, and drawing down from the thunder cloud
the lightning's discharge upon his own person. The bold philosopher
received unharmed the shock of the electric fluid, more fortunate than
others who have fallen victims to less daring experiments. The world was
delighted with the discoveries of the great American, and for a time
electricity was called Franklinism on the continent of Europe; but
Franklin was born here, and the name was not adopted in England. While
Franklin made experiments, Kinnersley exhibited and illustrated them,
and also rediscovered the seemingly opposite electricities of glass and
resin. Franklin's lightning rod is gradually surmounting the many
difficulties with which it contended, as experience attests the gre