ZEbunbet anfr Xlabtntng 117 



subject to electrical phenomena is the neighbourhood 

 of the Rio Plata, and he quotes from Azara's Voyage 

 to show that in the year 1793 " one of the most de- 

 structive thunderstorms perhaps on record " happened 

 at Buenos Ayres, when thirty -seven places within the 

 city were struck by lightning and nineteen people 

 killed. He asks if it is not possible that the mixture of 

 large bodies of fresh and salt water may disturb the 

 electrical equilibrium. 



On my putting the great naturalist's theory before 

 Dr. W. N. Shaw, he said he thought it impossible 

 either to confirm or deny it. He did not think that 

 anyone knew what the electrical equilibrium at the 

 mouth of a great river was, and that, of course, had 

 to be settled before the question of the effect of mixtures 

 of large bodies of fresh and salt water upon the equi- 

 librium was considered. It seems that no statistics of 

 the distribution of thunderstorms over the navigable 

 seas are forthcoming. Those observers to whom Dr. 

 Shaw had spoken were not prepared to risk any 

 generalisation. The Doctor added : "I recollect that 

 many years ago Sir Wm. Wharton, the hydrographer, 

 who had spent a good deal of his life in surveying, 

 spoke of the Straits of Magellan as being particularly 

 affected with thunderstorms." 



Darwin once inspected a house which had been 

 struck by lightning at Monte Video. "The paper," 

 he relates, " for nearly a foot on each side of the line 

 where the bell-wires had run, was blackened. The 

 metal had been fused, and although the room was 

 about fifteen feet high, the globules, dropping on the 

 chairs and furniture, had drilled in them a chain of 

 minute holes. A part of the wall was shattered as if 



