118 Danger from, Lightning. 



stated, nine individuals in the church of Chdteauneuf; on the 

 26th of the same month, a man killed in the open fields at 

 Maxey sur Vaize (Meurthe) ; on the 27th, a husbandman, his 

 wife, and son, who had taken refuge in the portico of a chapel 

 near Chatillon sur Seine ; on the 1st of August Jbrti/f)icr sheep, 

 near Beaumout le Roger {Eure) ; on the 2d of the same month, 

 a labourer who had taken refuge under a tree at Bourdeaux ; 

 on the same day, a husbandman of Vignetix, near Savenay, who 

 was killed in his chamber ; and, still under the same date, two 

 young students and two girls, between ten and twelve years of 

 age, in the house of M. TAbbe Coyrier, at ... . De^ 

 partement du Cantal ; and, finally, on the 27th of September at 

 five in the morning, a female domestic servant who was killed in 

 her bed, at Confolens, Charente. 



But if few persons perish from thunder-storms in the heart of 

 our towns, the number of houses and edifices which are struck, 

 and seriously injured, is, on the contrary, very considerable. 

 During the single night from the l4th to the 15th of April 1718, 

 the lightning struck twenty-four steeples in the space compre- 

 hended along the coast of Brittany, between Landernau and 

 *S'^ Polrde-Leon. During the night between the 25th and 26th 

 of April 1760, the lightning fell three times, in the short in- 

 terval of twenty minutes, upon the chapel and other buildings 

 of the Abbey of the Notre-Dame-de-Ham. On the morning 

 of the 17th of September 1772, the lightning injured Jour dif- 

 ferent buildings at Padua. A memoir of Henley, which is 

 dated December 1773, informs us that the same day, nay, that 

 nearly at the same moment, the lightning over London struck 

 the steeple of St MichaePs, the obelisk in St George's Fields, 

 the New Bridewell, a house in Lambeth, another house near 

 Vauxhall, and a great number of other places very distant from 

 each other, not omitting^ a Dutch vessel which was lying at 

 anchor near the Tower. 



A learned German found in the year 1783, that within the 

 space of thirty-three years, hghtning had struck 386 steeples, 

 and had killed 121 ringers* — the number of the wounded being 



* These numbers will not astonish any one, if I mention that, on the lltli 

 of Jmie 1775, lightning fell upon the steeple of the village of Aubigny, and 

 killed at the same instant three men, who were ringing the bells, and four 

 children who had taken refuge under the tower of the same steeple. 



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