182 Lightning connected with Metals, 



peared that no vestige of it could subsequently be found. 

 Otherwise, the lady received only the slightest possi"ble injuries. 



Without such preliminary remarks as these, it might excite 

 astonishment that I should place here the explanation which 

 the celebrated traveller Brydone gives of a circumstance which 

 happened to Mrs Douglas, a lady of his acquaintance. This lady 

 was regarding a thunder-storm from her window. It light- 

 ened, and her hat, and her hat only, was reduced to ashes. Ac- 

 cording to Brydone, the lightning had been attracted by the 

 metalHc wire which maintained the shape of her bonnet and sup- 

 ported its softer materials. Hence he proposes that these wires 

 should be abandoned, and protests against the prevailing fashion 

 of maintaining the tresses and ornamenting the hair with gold 

 and silver pins.* And in the very natural apprehension that 

 this advice would be disregarded, he urges, " that every lady 

 should wear a small chain or thread of brass wire which she 

 should hang, during the time of a thunder-storm, to the wires 

 of her bonnet, by which the fulminating matter might pass to 

 the earth, instead of traversing the head and other members."*' 



Upon the whole, it is preferable during a thunder storm to 

 have no metal about one. But is it, it may be asked, of the 

 slightest consequence to regard the increase of danger which a 

 watch, or buckles, or the money of your purse, or which the 

 wires, and chains, and pins used in a lady's toilet produce ? To 

 this question no general answer can be given ; for every one 

 will regard it through his own prepossessions, and will, more or 

 less, be determined by the apprehensions with which the meteor 

 inspires him. 



When lightning falls upon man or animals, placed near each other, 

 whether in a straight line, or in an uninclosed curve, it is gene- 

 rally at the two extremities of the line that its effects are most in' 

 tense and hurtful. 



This theorem, if I may so call it, seems to follow from the 

 facts which I have collected, and which subsequently may be 

 detailed ; in the mean while, I shall say a few words only, in the 



* Kundman mentions that a flash of lightning melted a pin of copper 

 which retained the tresses of a young lady ; and adds, by way of parenthe- 

 sis, that the tresses were not singed. 



