In the story of the progress of lightning protection in England, the career of William Snow Harris forms a chapter of no little interest, as showing both the inertness of the administration, as well as of the public, in the most important matters, and the good effects that may result from the persevering energy of a single man. When Mr. Snow Harris began his agitation for lightning conductors, about the year 1820, the ships of the Royal Navy were virtually without them, although they had something supposed to stand in their place. Just sixty years before, in 1762, Dr. William Watson, the indefatigable advocate of Franklin’s discovery, had strongly recommended to Lord Anson, first Lord of the Admiralty, that all men-of-war should have lightning conductors; and his urgent zeal, backed by influential friends, effected that his advice was listened to. Being requested to send in the best design for a ship’s conductor, Dr. Watson did so with alacrity, but, unfortunately, with little wisdom. Knowing little or nothing of ships and their management at sea, the learned member of the Royal Society advised that the lightning conductors for the navy should be constructed of strips of copper rod, one-fourth of an inch in diameter, hooked together every few feet by links, and the whole attached, for more security, to a hempen line, to be hung on to a metal spike on the top of the mast, and from thence to fall down into the sea. In theory, it was not a bad design, but it utterly failed in practice. Evidently, Dr. Watson had never been on board of a large ship in a gale, for had he been, he might have known that it would be next to impossible to keep his chain in its place, exposed as it was to the operation of violent mechanical forces, not to speak of possible bad treatment from indignant sailors, with whose movement in the rigging it interfered. It was a natural consequence of Dr. Watson’s ignorance, that his conductors entirely failed. In most cases the commanders of men-of-war, supplied with the copper-hempen chains, quietly stowed them away in some corner of the ship, with orders to take them out when needed, and it often happened that this was done only after the ship had been struck by lightning. Year after year there came reports of such casualties; and at last they got so numerous as really to attract the attention of the naval authorities. Still, nothing was done until William Snow Harris took up the matter. Sitting in his little cottage at Plymouth, overlooking the sea, the happy thought struck the young medical man, waiting for patients who did not come, that here might be found a profitable as well as useful opening for his activity. He possessed, happily, a few naval friends, ready with counsel and assistance, and so he went to action, fighting for lightning conductors.