TOL. XLIX.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 633 



should suffer no damage. Yet whenever my opinion is examined in Europe, 

 nothing is considered but the probability of those ro<ls preventing a stroke, or 

 explosion ; which is only a part of the use I proposed from them ; and the other 

 part, their conducting a stroke, which they may happen not to prevent, seems 

 to be totally forgotten, though of equal importance and advantage. 



I thank you for communicating M. de Button's relation of the effect of light- 

 ning at Dijon, on the 7th of June last. In return give me leave to relate an 

 instance I lately saw of the same kind. Being in the town of Newbury in New- 

 England, in November last, I was shown the effect of lightning on their church, 

 which had been struck a few months before. The steeple was a square tower of 

 wood, reaching 70 feet up from the ground to the place where the bell hung, 

 over which rose a taper spire, of wood likewise, reaching 70 feet higher, to the 

 vane or weather-cock. Near the bell was fixed an iron hammer to strike the 

 hours ; and from the tail of the hammer a wire went down through a small 

 gimblet hole in the floor that the bell stood upon, and through a second floor in 

 like manner ; then horizontally under and near the plastered ceiling of that se- 

 cond floor, till it came near a plastered wall ; then down by the side of that wall 

 to a clock, which stood about 20 feet below the bell. The wire was not thicker 

 than a common knitting needle. The spire was split all to pieces by the light- 

 ning, and the parts flung in all directions over the square in which the church 

 stood, so that nothing remained above the bell. 



The lightning passed between the hammer and the clock in the above-men- 

 tioned wire, without hurting either of the floors, or having any effect upon 

 them, except making the gimblet-holes, through which the wire passed, a little 

 larger, and without hurting the plastered wall, or any part of the building, so 

 far as the aforesaid wire and the pendulum wire of the clock extended ; which 

 latter wire was about the thickness of a goose-quill. From the end of the pen- 

 dulum, down quite to the ground, the building was exceedingly rent and da- 

 maged, and some stones in the foundation-wall torn out, and thrown to the 

 distance of 20 or 30 feet. No part of the afore-mentioned long small wire, be- 

 tween the clock and the hammer, could be found except about 2 inches, that 

 hung to the tail of the hammer, and about as much that was fastened to the 

 clock ; the rest being exploded, and its particles dissipated in smoke and air, as 

 gunpowder is by common fire, and had only left a black smutty track on the 

 plastering, 3 or 4 inches broad, darkest in the middle, and fainter towards the 

 edges, all along the ceiling, under which it passed, and down the wall. These 

 were the effects and appearances: on which I would only make the few following 

 remarks ; viz. 



1 . That lightning, in its passage through a building, will leave wood, to pass 

 as far as it can in metal, and not enter the wood again till the conductor of metal 



VOL. X. 4 M 



