First Sentence

"IN continuation of experiments on the electricity of air within doors, which I made twenty-seven years ago, and which are described in 296-300 of my Electrostatics and Magnetism, a series of observations was commenced under my instructions at the end of April last, within the Natural Philosophy Class Room and Laboratory, the Bute Hall, the University Tower, and other places inside and outside the buildings of Glasgow University, by Mr Magnus Maclean, official assistant to the Professor of Natural Philosophy, and Mr Goto of Tokio, Japan, for the purpose of endeavouring to find a relation between the electrification of air within a building and the atmospheric potential in its neighbourhood outside; and of finding causes which produced or changed the electrification of any given mass of air."