THE WEATHER BUREAU 399 



rods in width. Two and one half miles from Mr. Brown's 

 point it crossed a large cornfield and here it received much 

 coloring matter. That the affair was at this time in com- 

 fortable order w^as demonstrated by the shock it gave the 

 first house it struck as it left the cornfield, Mr. John Strohm's. 

 Mr. Strohm and his family saw it as it rose along the slant of 

 the cornfield to his house on its edge, and dove for the cellar. 

 The destruction at this place was complete; house of heavy 

 logs, windmill, and tower, and stable, in all seven buildings, 

 completely leveled to the ground, fences upset, broken down. 

 Fence wke woven and interwoven with broken lumber, straw, 

 debris of all sorts, plastered with mud. Every fence post 

 standing in the track formed a dam around which was massed 

 debris of ever^'thing imaginable, the whole daubed with mud ; 

 it was a picture of desolation and ruin — dismal in the extreme." 

 A reference to lightning brought out the fact that the 

 bureau is using its ponderous organization for the collection 

 of lightning statistics. The officials are less concerned with 

 the identification of the thunderbolt than they are with its 

 disastrous effects. According to lightning statistics, 312 in- 

 habitants of the United States, on an average, are struck by 

 lightning each year. Twenty five hundred were struck dur- 

 ing the last nine years. Farmers suffered most, probably 

 because of their exposed occupation, for the danger from 

 lightning is found to be four times as great in the country as 

 in cities. January naturally is the least dangerous month, 

 and July is the most dangerous — 123 persons were killed dur- 

 ing July, 1893. During the eight years ending with 1897, 

 7,558 buildings, valued at $17,072,772, were destroj-ed by 

 lightning; 4,891 of these were barns. Comparatively few 

 churches were struck. In 1898 buildings valued at $1,441,- 

 880 were destroyed. New York state hejuled the list with 

 395. There were no disastrous strokes in Idaho, Arizona, 

 California, Oregon, Nevada or Utah. In the same year, 1,842 

 animals, valued at $48,000, were killed by 710 strokes of 

 lightning. This mortality was unequally divided among cat- 

 tle, horses, mules, pigs and sheep, whole flocks of the latter 

 being killed by single bolts. There is no means of finding out 

 the exact number of trees struck, but it is interesting to know 



