340 Miscellaneous Intelligence. 



square across the road, cracking and crumbling the surface very 

 much, eight or ten inches in width, and raising a convex ridge 

 from two to four inches high ; a ridge exactly resembling, except 

 in sixe, those produced by a common species of mole passing near 

 the surface. The fluid seems to have passed the road ten or fif- 

 teen inches deep. The soil is here somewhat gravelly, and the 

 road trodden very hard. In approaching the ditch on the other 

 side of the road, the fluid threw off from the edge of the road a 

 large cake of hard earth, eight or ten feet long, and from one to 

 four wide. This was not entirely broken up, but was pushed a 

 little forward, broken into large masses, and some of it crumbled. 

 The fluid was here divided into three portions, and took as many 

 different directions. In two of these directions it left marks 

 of violent action along the surface. The third portion plunged 

 under a very thick and matted clump of roots of small bushes, 

 and came out on the opposite side, at a distance of ten feet, and 

 in ten or fifteen feet more spent itself. The only circumstance 

 that can be thought peculiar in this case is the passage of the 

 electric fluid for such a distance under the surface of the earth, 

 and that without following any such substances as commonly guide 

 its course there, as roots, stones, 8^c. The fluid seems not to have 

 been guided at all by any attracting substance, but to have been 

 carried forward nearly in a straight course by a momentum it had 

 received through a medium opposing the most powerful resist- 

 ance, a medium in which it is commonly supposed to be almost 

 immediately dissipated and lost. The fluid certainly passed thus 

 from the wall to the second ditch, a distance of nearly fifty feet, 

 and after passing this ditch one portion of it passed ten feet 

 through, or under, a very tough clump of roots. Without any 

 difficulty I thrust a stake, six or eight feet long, its whole length 

 beneath a clump of bushes, along the course of the fluid, while 

 any strength was insufficient to make it penetrate at all in any 

 other direction. Along the whole fifty feet the evidence of its 

 having passed was indisputable. How the fluid passed through 

 the thirty feet from the tree to the wall, may, perhaps, not be 

 thought quite so certain, as it left no signs of its passage above 

 ground, and no indubitable ones could be discovered below by 

 thrusting down a staff. But, for myself, I cannot doubt the first 

 part of its course was similar to the latter part ; but passing be- 

 low a thick and strong turf, and, perhaps, a little deeper, its 

 course could not be so easily traced. If the fluid did not pass 

 under ground the first part of its course, it must have come out 

 of the ground a few feet from the tree, leaped thirty feet through 

 the air to the wall, and without leaving any trace of its influence 

 on the posts and rails, or displacing the small stones Avhich com- 

 posed the wall, sunk quietly down through the wall to its founda- 

 tions, and then gone off as before described at right angles to 



