the action of the Leyden jar, and was
the first American writer on the modern science of political economy.
This energetic citizen of Pennsylvania spent a large part of his life
in research; he studied the Gulf Stream, storms and their causes,
waterspouts, whirlwinds; and he established the fact that the northeast
storms of the Atlantic coast usually move against the wind.

But Franklin was not the only scientist in the colony. Besides his three
friends, Kinnersley, Hopkinson, and Syng, who worked with him and helped
him in his discoveries, there were David Rittenhouse, the astronomer,
John Bartram, the botanist, and a host of others. Rittenhouse excelled
in every undertaking which required the practical application of
astronomy, He attracted attention even in Europe for his orrery which
indicated the movements of the stars and which was an advance on all
previous instruments of the kind. When astronomers in Europe were
seeking to have the transit of Venus of 1769 observed in different parts
of the world, Pennsylvania alone of the American colonies seems to
have had the man and the apparatus necessary for the work. Rittenhouse
conducted the observations at three points and won a world-wide
reputation by the accuracy and skill of his observations. The whole
community was interested in this scientific undertaking; the Legislature
and public institutions raised the necessary funds; and the American
Philosophical Society, the only organization of its kind in the
colonies, had charge of the preparations.

The American Philosophical Society had been started in Philadelphia in
1743. It was the first scientific society to be founded in America, and
throughout the colonial period it was the only society of its kind in
the country. Its membership included not only prominent men throughout
America, such as Thomas Jefferson, who were interested in scientific
inquiry, but also representatives of foreign nations. With its library
of rare and valuable collections and its annual publication of essays on
almost every branch of science, the society still continues its useful
scientific work.

John Bartram, who was the first botanist to describe the plants of the
New World and who explored the whole country from the Great Lakes to
Florida, was a Pennsylvania Quaker of colonial times, farmer born and
bred. Thomas Godfrey, also a colonial Pennsylvanian, was rewarded by
the Royal Society of England for an improvement which he made in
the