132 THE ADVENTURES OF A NATURE GUIDE 



and crackle around rock points and give a tingle 

 to the hair and ringer tips, but there is no striking 

 in this zone. Here the fluid may concentrate and 

 descend upon lesser heights. 



Though these so-called electrical storms are 

 common on mountain peaks, I have not heard of 

 their being fatal or even serious. But as Muir 

 says, they often cause every hair on one's head to 

 stand up like an enthusiastic congregation and sing. 



Lightning, however, is said to assail frequently 

 the summit of Little Mount Ararat, Asia, and 

 numbers of rocks on the top are shattered, bored 

 through, and in places fused to glass by lightning 

 strokes. 



Lightning sometimes strikes a gravelly or sandy 

 place and may penetrate for twenty feet or more, 

 leaving a tiny, ragged-edged hole an inch or less 

 in diameter. Around the edge of this the sand 

 and stone are fused into glass or near glass. Some- 

 times a bolt penetrates solid rock and makes a 

 glassy hole; but more often when rock is struck the 

 bolt seems to explode as though resisted. 



It was Benjamin Franklin who first thought to 

 turn electrical energy into constructive work. And 

 also it was he who brought forward the lightning-rod 

 plan as a means of protecting buildings from light- 

 ning damage. 



In May, 1904, I happened to be on Specimen 

 Mountain, about 13,000 feet above the sea, during 

 the gathering and the continuance of a storm which 



