438 The Ohio Naturalist. [Vol. XV, No. 4, 



by lightning was less than one -fourth of the total lost by fire. The 

 loss on the buildings burned or damaged by lightning was about 

 one-third of the total fire loss. 



Loss by Lightning Largely in Rural Districts. — In the central 

 part of the country the loss and damage by lightning is far greater 

 in the country than in the cities. The Indiana Fire Marshal 

 states that 75% of all lightning losses occur in the country, which 

 contains but 47% of the population. Also that in 1913, 92% of 

 all bams damaged by lightning were in the country and that 

 69% of all barn losses were total. The Ohio Fire Marshal says 

 that of 416 hghtning fires in 1913, 319 were in bams. One 

 insurance agent in Missouri reports that in 17 years the losess due 

 to lightning on barns has been $6,000 greater than by fire from 

 other causes. 



Lightning. — Lightning is an electric spark on a tremendous 

 scale. It occurs between clouds more frequently than between 

 cloud and earth. Flashes last from one-one-hundred-thousandth 

 to one-five-thousandth of a second. 



Damage by lightning is mechanical as well as thermal. Not 

 only is damage done by main discharges, but currents are induced 

 in near-by metal objects and conductors and these often produce 

 additional damage. Fires may be started in inflammable material 

 between two nearly parallel rods or wires by these induction 

 effects. Cases cited are between a fan shaft and a drive shaft 

 bearing in a flour inill. Also between wires on baled hay, and 

 between telephone wires and a lightning rod, where it is stated 

 that lightning will jump 10 to 15 feet between the lightning 

 rod and telephone wire. 



Lightning Rods. — There was a time when lightning rods were 

 a fad and the lightning rod agent flourished in the land and 

 waxed fat. Because the lightning rod agent insisted on accu- 

 mulating the good things of the land too rapidly there soon came a 

 second period when shot guns were kept loaded and within reach, 

 because the lightning rod agent was more to be feared than the 

 lightning. And this second period still obtains in some parts 

 of this country today. 



But the lightning rods that were up staid up and those that 

 had been installed in an honest and correct manner apparently 

 furnished protection, while all around them buildings were being 

 destroyed by lightning strokes. 



Fire protection agencies, appalled at the immense fire loss, 

 have in more recent years turned to the lightning rod as a possible 

 aid. Honest lightning rod manufacturing companies have 

 insisted that properly erected lightning rods arc a protection, 

 and professors of physics have told us that lightning rods, when 

 continuous from the moist earth to the top of buildings, must aid 



