212 SUMMER 



would be adequately watered with the least possible incon- 

 venience to man. But thunder-storms are an effect, not a 

 cause, of bad weather ; and in seasons when the weather is 

 thoroughly broken they sometimes follow each other in con- 

 stant succession for weeks. The sky remains misty and livid, 

 the air is dead and clammy, almost all day and all night the 

 thunder is growling uneasily round the hills ; and every 

 second or third day somewhere about the country there is a 

 savage tempest which strikes sheep and cattle dead as they 

 stand under the elms and poplars in the meadow, and sears 

 the trunks of the oaks. 



Long and varied lists may be collected of the unaccount- 

 able arbitrariness of lightning in its onsets on human beings 

 how it will kill two men in a group of half a dozen, or pick 

 up another and drop him yards away, dazed but unhurt. 

 Fortunately in our climate deaths by lightning are excep- 

 tional among human beings, although horses, cattle, and 

 sheep suffer more often owing to their habit of clustering 

 under trees to escape the thunder-rain. The danger is 

 notorious of standing close to so probable a conductor of the 

 lightning- flash as an isolated tree or group of trees. It is 

 sometimes said that the safest place in a thunder-storm is 

 close to a tall tree, yet not too close ; but the delicate ques- 

 tion of exactly how close is safe has not been satisfactorily 

 determined. In a broad field or on an open road the human 

 figure itself may become the most natural lightning con- 

 ductor ; so that both extremes are perilous. Any prominent 

 tree may attract the flash, irrespective of its kind ; and the 

 common statement that the beech is never touched by light- 

 ning is certainly untrue. Beeches are less often struck than 

 oaks or elms, but that is because they grow far less often 

 isolated in fields and hedges. They also prefer a dry situa- 

 tion ; and lightning is attracted by water in the soil, which 



