128 Means of Protection against Lightning. 



But there are facts still more astonishing, for it would ap- 

 pear that animals may be more or less severely injured in dif- 

 ferent parts of the body, according to the colour of the hair 

 which covers them. Thus, at the beginning of September 1774, 

 an ox was struck with lightning at Swanborrow, in Sussex. 

 The colour of this animal was red, spotted with white. After 

 it was struck, all were surprised to observe the denudation of 

 the white spots ; on these not a single hair remained, whilst the 

 red portions of the hide had not undergone any apparent altera- 

 tion. The owner of the animal stated, moreover, to Mr James 

 Lambert, that two years previously, another ox, under the 

 same circumstances, had exhibited precisely the same appear- 

 ances. Finally, on the SOth of September 1775, a pie-bald 

 horse having being struck with lightning, at Glynd, its owner 

 remarked, that, throughout the whole extent of the white spots, 

 the hair came oft', as it were, of itself, whilst, in the other parts, 

 the coat adhered as usual. 



" When a thunder-storm threatened, Tiberius never failed to 

 wear a crown of laurel-leaves, under the idea that lightning 

 never touched the leaves of this tree." (Suetonius.) And the 

 opinion, that certain trees are never struck by the meteor, is 

 still widely spread. Mr Hugh Maxwell communicated to the 

 American Academy, in 1787, information, that, according to his 

 own observation, and the intelligence he had received from a 

 great number of individuals, he thought himself warranted in 

 affirming, that lightning often struck the elm, the chesnul, the 

 oak, and pine, and sometimes too the ash ; and that it never 

 fell upon the beach, the birch, and the maple. Captain Dib- 

 den does not allow such marked distinctions. In a letter to 

 Mr Wilsen, dated 1764, he only says, that in the forests of 

 Virginia, which he had visited, in the year 1763, the pines, 

 though considerably higher than the oaks, were not so frequently 

 struck as these last named ; and he adds, I do not remember, 

 in those localities where the oak and pine grew together, to 

 have seen the latter scathed by lightning. Let us now, how- 

 ever, inquire what facts declare upon the point. 



opinion, under the idea that wet clothes must immediately transmit to the 

 soil the lightning which would otherwise strike the person. 



