112 On Ascending' Lightning. 



the pavement, composed of large blue stones, placed under the 

 porch corresponding vertically to the weather-cock of the 

 steeple. In the summer of 1787 again, lightning fell upon 

 two individuals who had taken refuge under a tree, near the 

 village of Tacon, in the Beaujolois. Their hair was tossed 

 high up the tree, and a small ring of iron which was attached 

 to the shoe of one of these unfortunate individuals was also 

 found, after the event, hooked to a very high branch. On the 

 29th of August 1808, lightning fell upon a temporary erection, 

 of a round form, and covered with thatch, belonging to a pub- 

 lic house behind the hospital of Salpetriere at Paris. A work- 

 man who was sitting under this building was killed, and por- 

 tions of his hat were found sticking in the roof. 



If all these phenomena of upraising be regarded as the di- 

 rect effects of lightning, it will appear difficult not to admit, 

 with the natural philosophers who have more particularly dwelt 

 upon them, that in the instances which occurred at Rouvroi, 

 Tacon, and la Salpetriere, it was ascending ; — that instead of 

 descending from the clouds to the earth, it was projected from 

 the earth towards the clouds. If, on the contrary, you admit 

 the possibility of indirect effects, and if you regard steam as in- 

 termediate, then the upraising of the pavement of Rouvroi, and 

 the projection from below upwards of the iron ring of Tacon, 

 and the fragments at the hotel of Salpetriere no longer assist in 

 indicating the direction of the moveipent of the Hghtning. 



Flashes of lightning sometimes produce only the partial de- 

 cortication of trees. On these occasions it is not rare to find 

 long stripes of bark, both the outer coarse bark, and the inner 

 and finer membrane, completely detached heloiv, and still adher- 

 ing to the trunk near its summit. The old volumes ^of the 

 Academy of Sciences would furnish me, if required, with many 

 instances of this phenomenon. I might find them also in going 

 over Le Journal de Physique, and more especially the Memoir 

 of M. Mourgues concerning the storms observed at Marsillar- 

 gues, near Montpellier, in the month of June 1778 ; in a me- 

 moir of M. Marchais relative to the flashes of lightning which 

 struck a numlfer of trees in the Champs Elysees at Paris, &c. 

 &C. ; but all these instances of bark torn from below upwards, 



