154 THUNDERBOLTS 



noticed among the Glendowan Mountains in Donegal, 

 behaved even more eccentrically, as might be expected 

 from its Irish antecedents. It first skirted the earth in a 

 leisurely way for several hundred yards like a cannon-ball ; 

 then it struck the ground, ricochetted, and once more 

 bounded along for another short spell ; after which it dis- 

 appeared in the boggy soil, as if it were completely finished 

 and done for. But in another moment it rose again, 

 nothing daunted, with Celtic impressibility, several yards 

 away, pursued its ghostly course across a running stream 

 (which shows, at least, there could have been no witchcraft 

 in it), and finally ran to earth for good in the opposite bank, 

 leaving a round hole in the sloping peat at the spot where 

 it buried itself. Where it first struck, it cut up the peat as 

 if with a knife, and made a broad deep trench which re- 

 mained afterwards as a witness of its eccentric conduct. 

 If the person who observed it had been of a superstitious 

 turn of mind we should have had here one of the finest 

 and most terrifying ghost stories on the entire record, 

 which would have made an exceptionally splendid show in 

 the ' Transactions of the Society for Psychical Kesearch.' 

 Unfortunately, however, he was only a man of science, un- 

 gifted with the precious dower of poetical imagination ; so 

 he stupidly called it a remarkable fire-ball, measured the 

 ground carefully like a common engineer, and sent an 

 account of the phenomenon to that far more prosaic perio- 

 dical, the ' Quarterly Journal of the Meteorological Society.' 

 Another splendid apparition thrown away recklessly, for 

 ever ! 



There is a curious form of electrical discharge, some- 

 what similar to the fire-ball but on a smaller scale, which 

 may be regarded as the exact opposite of the thunderbolt, 

 inasmuch as it is always quite harmless. This is St. Elmo's 

 fire, a brush of lambent light, which plays around the 



