VOL. LI.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 327 



towards the squares below. This bundle seems to fill the whole ring, and to 

 part as it were from the centre of the under side; where is a hollow or separa- 

 tion, which passes in a right line from the head to the tail. The bundles of 

 prickles appear round at first, and terminate in points; but afterwards they are 

 seen to spread out like a fan; so that their extremities are more than 4 times the 

 breadth of their bases. They contain an infinite number of prickles, which are 

 extremely fine, loose, and brilliant, like an aigrette of glass, but more free and 

 loose. The range of prickles underneath spreads also like fans, serving the insect 

 as feet; for it is on these he stands, and moves on them as the scolopendre does 

 on his feet. Having put these sea scolopendres on his fingers, they thrust a 

 great number of their prickles into the skin, and caused a sharp pain for some 

 hours: it was like fire on the part. It was in vain that he rubbed and washed 

 the part; and though the prickles were broken, yet the parts that stuck in the 

 flesh produced their effect, and caused the pain he felt for some hours. After- 

 wards it all went off without any further ill consequence. 



Vll. On a Storm of Thunder and Lighining at Norwich^ July 13, 1758. By 



Mr. Samuel Cooper.* p. 38. 



About 4 o'clock on Thursday afternoon, July 13, 1758, a short but severe 

 thunder storm, with lightning, fell on the top of a house standing alone, and 

 belonging to a common garden, on the causeway near Sandling's ferry, in the 

 city of Norwich ; it struck off the tiles of the roof at the east end, to the space 

 of a yard or two ; burnt a very small hole in the middle of a lath, in piercing 

 into the chamber, and then darted to the north-east; ripped off the top of an 

 old chair, without throwing it down; snapped the two heads of the bed-posts, 

 rent the curtains, drove against the wall (the front of the house stands due north- 

 east) forced out an upright of a window frame a yard long, 3 inches broad, and 

 2 thick ; smote it in a right line into an opposite ditch, 1 or 12 yards distant . 

 then struck down on the wall of the chamber, paring off half a foot's breadth 

 of its plastered covering quite down to the floor; lifted up a board of the floor, 

 and leaving a hole of half an inch diameter, pierced through by the side of the 

 main beam into the kitchen, towards the west end of a pewter shelf; traversed 

 the whole shelf to the east, and melted superficially, to the breadth of a shilling, 

 6 pewter dishes, 2 plates, and a pewter basin, all standing touching each other: 

 2 of the dishes were thrown down, the rest not displaced. Under this, a nar- 

 rower shelf of pewter plates untouched. In its descent to the floor, knocked 

 down, as she expressed it, an ancient woman sitting in the passage westward of 



* This account is confirmed in almost every circumstance by another communicated to the Royal 

 Society in a letter from Mr. William Arderon, f- k.s. to Mr. Henry Baker, f. r. s.— Ori 



