You were complaining about me, Monsieur and dear colleague, while I was complaining about you. Our letters must have crossed: I hope very much that you received a copy of my memoir on the metallic rods etc. that I sent you in March. However, judging by your pleasant complaints about my silence, I am afraid that you did not receive the letter I wrote you at the beginning of the year. Regardless, please believe that when I haven't written you for a long time, it is because unavoidable affairs keep me from an activity which brings me so much pleasure.

I am doubly indebted to you, for the high hopes that you give me about the next election in May, and for the flattering news that the American Philosophical Society has chosen me to be one of its members. Not only do I accept this honor with great pleasure, but I feel quite proud to be in a Society which has begun so well and which gives such high hopes— hopes worthy of its President. Please tell him as much, while waiting for me to write to him myself, as I plan to send him a letter of thanks that I will ask you to send overseas.

You bring me great pleasure by saying that you are putting out a new edition of your book; I assure you that it will make a wonderful present today. I say today because all the ineptitudes and silly errors in electricity that the Abbé Nollet spread around are beginning to be recognized. As I make it clear in the memoir that I sent you, a man like him holds back the progress of a science by half-centuries. Three-quarters of the people in this country are still almost at the ABC's of electricity, which obliged me, as I wrote you, to begin at such a basic level in my memoir. I believed that our secretary had thanked you for the memoirs of the Philadelphia Academy, but as he has not done it, I thank you in the name of our Academy, for we received them some time ago.

It seems to me that M. Banks could not do any better to make the most of the voyage to the Pole that you are planning. His trip to Holland regarding this voyage gave me great pleasure. You often teach us lessons, we who do everything running around in such a hurry. Our unfortunate haste spoils most of our enterprises and research. One could almost always say to us, as Bacon said: let us go a little more slowly, and we will have finished sooner.

Doubtless you know that my older brother received the Academy's prize for measuring longitudes. It appears from the committee's report (done by MM. Pingré and Borda) that his marine chronometer gave the longitude to within a quarter of a degree in six weeks' time, double the accuracy required by the act of the English Parliament to receive the 90000 livres. And there is every reason to believe that the chronometer would have given unequivocal proof of a similar accuracy during the entire voyage, but, by a misfortune quite upsetting to my brother, some caissons fell upon it, which gave the chronometer such a rude shock that its accuracy was sensibly altered for a long while. It was such a shock that another of my brother's dials on board had its thermometer broken, so that they could not use it for observations for the rest of the voyage. The accident occurred in March, that is, almost at the middle of the voyage, but I don't know if I have already told you this. Since you are a fellow member, I am sending you a schedule for our Academy, where you will see the new topic that the Academy proposes for the prize of 1775.

Since I received your letter, I got the piece by M. Wilson but despite all his arguments, I still am of the same opinion, and I think that the rods or bars must be pointed; not so much, however, that the point might be melted or taken off by the heat of the lightning bolt, because then it would be of little use for transmitting the electrical energy in a subsequent thunderbolt. You saw my memoir; you saw that I was a little uncertain. But your reasoning, and the thinking that I have done since then on this important matter, have convinced me that the rods must be tapered at least to a certain degree because— this is the essential part— the point that you raise up attracts the bolt, more than all the other parts of the construction, or at least allows it an easy entrance. If this point or bar is short and blunt at the end, it will be almost dangerous, having little advantage over the surrounding parts if the bolt strikes there; from which it follows that it will be useless, etc. There is more: the sort of shock that forms the spark seems to require that a great quantity of electric matter be transmitted or discharged instantaneously— for here is a guaranteed experiment. If you want to discharge a plate, you can do it safely without fear of shock or violent jolts by touching one hand to one surface and then by approaching the other surface with a long, very fine, sharp needle in the other hand. You will only feel the shock very faintly unless the plate is excessively charged. This is an experiment that I have done and have had others do a hundred times. I would dare to further propose, but I haven't done it, that the melting of gold does not take place if the piece of iron or the copper ball, by which the charge of the Leyden Experiment is produced, as well as all the experiments done with this charge, would not have been able to draw an arc without a long, very pointed, slender rod. The consequences of these facts are easy to deduce for buildings equipped with preservative metallic rods, in order to avoid as much as possible that the electricity be dissipated by an arc or a bolt rather than being dissipated little by little in silence.

I have so filled these 4 pages of my letter that I am obliged to add here that you will find in this package the print and the figures from the MS. that I sent you, where you will see how I propose that the bars be arranged and even how I suppose that they must be put on the facades of very high buildings.