266 Remarks on the 
imagined. to extend beneath the former, and a 
portion of it at E to be nearly within strik- 
ing distance of the road at LM, where the 
two carts may be supposed to have been pass- 
ing. Both clouds may be assumed to be 
positively electrified. When the upper cloud 
discharges itself violently into the earth at G, 
the electricity of the lower cloud, hitherto 
condensed by the contiguity of the upper one, 
will rush at DA to restore the equilibrium in 
the latter. The electricity of the earth at 
LM, which had hitherto remained quiescent, 
though condensed by the electrical atmo- 
sphere of the lower cloud, being now freed 
from the superincumbent elastic pressure, will 
issue, with great force, into the contiguous 
cloud DEF, destroying or greatly injuring 
the imperfect conductors through which it 
passes. This mode of action of the electric 
fluid, Earl Stanhope has denominated the 
returning stroke. ‘It accounts,” his Lordship 
has observed, “for the loud report of thunder 
that was unaccompanied by lightning at L or 
at M. The report must be loud from its 
being near; but no lightning could be per- 
ceived at L or M by reason of the thick 
thunder cloud DEF being situated immedi- 
ately between the spectator at M and DA, the 
place between the two clouds where the 
lightning was.” 
