FIELD AND STUDY 



In her subtler physical forces, Nature often seems 

 capricious and lawless, probably on account of our 

 limited vision. We see the lightning cleave the air 

 in one blinding flash from the clouds to the earth, 

 often shattering a tree or a house on its way down. 

 Hence it is always a surprise to see the evidence 

 that the thunderbolt strikes upward as well as 

 downward. During an electric storm one summer 

 night an enormous charge of electricity came up 

 out of the earth under a maple-tree at the foot of 

 the hill below my study, scattering the sod, the 

 roots, and some small bushes like an explosion of 

 powder or dynamite; then it rooted around on the 

 ground like a pig, devouring or annihilating the 

 turf, making a wide, ragged, zigzag trench seven or 

 eight feet long down the hill in the ground, when it 

 dived beneath the wagon track, five or six feet wide, 

 bursting out here and there on the surface, then 

 escaped out of the bank made by the plough on the 

 edge of the vineyard. Here it seems to have leaped 

 to the wire trellis of the grapevines, running along it 

 northward, scorching the leaves here and there, 

 and finally vented its fury on a bird-box that was 

 fastened to a post at the end of the row. It com- 

 pletely demolished the box, going a foot or more 

 out of its way to do so. The box was not occupied, 

 so there was not the anticlimax of a bolt of Jove 

 slaughtering house wrens or bluebirds. Maybe it 

 was the nails that drew the charge to the box. But 

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