Chap. IX.] LIGIITNmG CONDUCTORS. 511 



Gotama Buddha himself ; and if these were not ah-eady 

 secured from the perils of lightning by their own 

 sanctity, their safety could scarcely be enhanced by the 

 adchtion of a diamond hoop. 



The conjectiu-e is, therefore, forced on us, that the 

 Singhalese, in that remote era, had observed some phy- 

 sical facts, or learned their existence from others, which 

 suggested the idea that it might be practicable, by some 

 mechanical device, to ward off the danger of hghtning. 

 It is just possible that having ascertained that glass 

 or precious stones acted as insulators of electricity, it 

 may have occurred to them that one or both might be 

 employed as preservative agents against hghtning. 



Modern science is enabled promptly to condemn this 

 reasoning, and to pronounce that the expedient, so far 

 from averting, would fearfully add to, the peril. 

 But in the infancy of all inquiries the observation of 

 effects generally precedes the comprehension of causes, 

 and whilst it is obvious that nothing attained by the 

 Singhalese in the tliuTl century anticipated the great 

 discoveries relative to the electric nature of hghtning, 

 which were not announced till the seventeenth or 

 eighteenth, we cannot but feel that the contrivance 

 described in the Mahawanso was one likely to originate 

 amongst an iU-informed people, who had witnessed 

 certain phenomena the causes of which they were un- 

 able to trace, and from which they were mcapable of 

 deducing any accurate conclusions.^ 



' I b ave been told tbat within a I sunnount tbe ligbtning conductors 

 comparatively recent period it was of tbe Admiralty and some other 

 customary in this coim try, from some Government buildings "witb a glass 

 motive not altogether apparent, to summit. 



