372 PHILOSOPHY OF STORMS. 



Nor do I know any experiments going to shew how elec- 

 tricity could produce the phenomenon. 



M. Babinet told me that he knew instances in which the hair 

 on the mons veneris and in the arm pits was entirely remov- 

 ed from persons killed by lightning, while that on the head 

 was not disturbed. 



In the case of the chickens, however, they were not killed 

 outright, but were seen walking about in all their naked 

 simplicity after the spout had passed on. Nor do I recollect 

 to have heard of one well authenticated case of death by elec- 

 tricity, in this meteor, of persons in houses exploded in such 

 a manner as to have their walls found lying on all sides of 

 their foundations. I have heard it also confidently asserted 

 that many persons in the Natchez tornado were stripped en- 

 tirely naked, who had not experienced any very severe 

 bodily injury ; but I am not able to vouch for the truth of 

 the story. If it is so, it is like the stripping of the chickens ; 

 a fact not yet fully explained. 



But if these particular effects should be found to depend on 

 electricity, as it is highly probable they do, it will not follow 

 that all the other phenomena of tornadoes depend on elec- 

 tricity also. 



Many of them manifestly do not ; for example, the eleva- 

 tion of very heavy materials to a great height, cannot be af- 

 fected by electrical attraction, because action and reaction 

 being equal and in opposite directions, the upper parts of the 

 atmosphere being so very rare, could not afford a reaction 

 sufficient to draw up these materials from below, without 

 being attracted downwards with a velocity altogether incon- 

 ceivable, and we have no evidence of its coming down at all. 

 But it is unnecessary to attack other theories ; if the doctrine 

 taught in this volume is true, it leaves no room for any 

 other; it occupies the whole ground. 



Neither is it necessary for me to explain every fact con- 

 tained in the foregoing accounts-. The reader who makes 



