1867. J 345 [Chase. 



where cars pass; here the rails were not in close contact, and there 

 was another flash and report. 



Some miners sitting near by, with their feet on the track, were 

 startled by a very perceptible shock, and at the end of the gang- 

 way, 300 yards further west, the men saw the flash and heard tiie 

 report, which was again compared to a shooting-cracker. The dis- 

 tance travelled by the fluid, from where it first struck to where it 

 was last visible, was about 1550 yards. 



On the same day, about 3 P.M., weather very warm and sultry, 

 and raining very fast, the lightning struck the rails again at the 

 slope-house, passed along through the building, and then down the 

 main slope, 212 yards long; the men employed at the foot of the 

 slope saw what they described as a ball of fire coming down, and 

 when passing the switches at the foot of the slope, they heard a loud 

 report, and saw a vivid flash of light. 



At 70 yards from foot of slope, the men at the " turnout " saw the 

 current flashing from one rail to another, with a noise as before de- 

 scribed. 



At 500 yards from foot of slope, at another " turnout," the same 

 thing occurred; at 900 yards again. At 1000 yards from slope, 

 two men were sitting on the bumper of a car, with their feet on the 

 track; they felt the shock distinctly, were very much frightened by 

 the strange sen.sation. Beyond this point no men were at work, and 

 it was not traced any fixrther. 



Mr. P. E. Chase made the followino; remarks concerninor the 

 strictures of a writer in the North American Review for July : 



A philologist, whose profound and conscientious scholarship has 

 earned a world-wide and well-deserved reputation, has honored me, 

 in the July number of the " North American Review," with some 

 severe strictures upon portions of my articles in the thirteenth vol- 

 ume of the Transactions of this Society. Criticisms from such a 

 source, even if mistaken, must at least be honest, and should not be 

 lightly disregarded. 



Says the reviewer : " It is even now possible for a student to take 

 the vocabulary of an African language, and sit deliberately down to 

 see what words of the various other languages known to him he can 

 explain out of it, producing a batch of atrocious identifications, 

 whereof the following are specimens: ahetele, 'a begging beforehand' 

 (defined by the comparer himself as composed of a, formative prefix, 

 be, 'beg,' and tele, 'previously'), and German hetteln, 'beg' (from 



