THUNDERBOLTS 153 



copoeia of Ireland they have been employed with success 

 for ophthalmia, pleurisy, and many other painful diseases. 

 If finely powdered and swallowed piecemeal, they render 

 the person who swallows them invulnerable for the rest of 

 his lifetime. But they cannot conscientiously be recom- 

 mended for dyspepsia and other forms of indigestion. 



As if on purpose to confuse our already very vague ideas 

 about thunderbolts, there is one special kind of lightning 

 which really seems intentionally to simulate a meteorite, 

 and that is the kind known as fireballs or (more scientifi- 

 cally) globular lightning. A fireball generally appears as 

 a sphere of light, sometimes only as big as a Dutch cheese, 

 sometimes as large as three feet in diameter. It moves 

 along very slowly and demurely through the air, remaining 

 visible for a whole minute or two together ; and in the end it 

 generally bursts up with great violence, as if it were a 

 London railway station being experimented upon by Irish 

 patriots. At Milan one day a fireball of this description 

 walked down one of the streets so slowly that a small 

 crowd walked after it admiringly, to see where it was going. 

 It made straight for a church steeple, after the common but 

 sacrilegious fashion of all lightning, struck the gilded cross 

 on the topmost pinnacle, and then immediately vanished, 

 like a Virgilian apparition, into thin air. 



A few years ago, too, Dr. Tripe was watching a very 

 severe thunderstorm, when he saw a fire-ball come quietly 

 gliding up to him, apparently rising from the earth rather 

 than falling towards it. Instead of running away, like a 

 practical man, the intrepid doctor held his ground quietly 

 and observed the fiery monster with scientific nonchalance. 

 After continuing its course for some time in a peaceful and 

 regular fashion, however, without attempting to assault 

 him, it finally darted off at a tangent in another direction, 

 and turned apparently into forked lightning. A fire-ball, 



