Prati Kellogg on the Passage of Lightning. 85 
ch of ae forming a matted bundle of roots and 
two or three feet in diameter and raised a little above 
the adjoining surface. In coming from beneath this clus- 
‘ter of noe which stood near the ditch, the fluid came so 
near the surface as to throw off considerable lumps of earth 
= from the side of the ditch, and raise and crack the 
a its course across the bottom of it. It does not 
seem to have come out of the ground here ; but continuing 
under ground, it went square across the road, cracking and 
crumbling the surface very much, eight or ten inches in 
width, and raising a convex ridge from two to four inches 
high,a ridge exactly resembling, except in size, those pro- 
duced by a common species of L@ole passing near the sur- 
ae pote the road, a large cake of hard earth, ei 
or ten feet long, and from one to four wide. is was. 
entirely broken up; but was pushed a little forward, bro- 
_ ken into large masses, and some of it crumbled. The fluid 
was here divided into three oe and took as man 
— . In two these directions it left 
iolent action along the surface. The third por- 
tion slid under a very thick and matted clump of roots 
of small bushes, and came out on the opposite side, at a dis- 
tance of ten feet, and in ten or fifteen feet more spent itself. 
The only circumstance that can be thought eae in this 
case, is the passage of the electric fluid for su istance 
under the surface of the earth; and that without  followlig 
any such substances as commonly guide its course there, 
_ as roots, stones, &c. The fluid seems not to have been 
guided at all by any attracting substance, but to have been 
carried forward nearly in a —— course by a mo- 
mentum it had received, through a medium opposing 
the most powerful resistance; a medium in which it is 
ens supposed to be almost immediately dissipated 
The fluid certainly passed thus from the wall 
és wae second ditch; a distance of nearly fifty. feet, and 
after passing this ditch, one portion of it passed ten feet 
rough or under a very tough clump of roots. Without 
avy difficulty, I thrust a stake six or eight feet long its whole 
