328 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 17 5g. 



the shelves; who being presently taken up, her shoulders and back were found 

 to be scorched all over, with the hind part of her left leg; the skin almost uni- 

 versally red and inflamed, rimpled in two or three places, but not broken: her 

 shift burnt brown, stocking singed, with its colour of the inside discharged, and 

 the outside unchanged: right foot very painful and bruised, with that shoe struck 

 off, and its upper leather torn: her gown and other clothes without any damage. 

 It passed through the same passage without injuring another old woman sitting 

 knee to knee with her companion ; but keeping its direction to the north-east, 

 turned on a right angle on the outer door, split it, and passed through into the 

 open air. On a right line with this passage to the west, and under the same 

 roof, is the wash-house, where stood the master and his man. They saw the 

 woman tumble down, and heard such a violent explosion, that made them both 

 think the whole house must come down: and the man says, with such a blaze, 

 as if all was on fire, but that was but for a moment. To the east of the pewter 

 shelves, and under that part of the roof where it entered, it rushed into the 

 kitchen closet, by tearing off^ a wooden button, that was nailed on, and there 

 took some pieces from a Delft dish without throwing it down, broke a quart mug, 

 and from a 4-ounce phial half full of oil cut off" its empty half part without spill- 

 ing a drop of the oil. The activity of the lightning was with abated violence to 

 all other points of the compass ; but not without some considerable degree of 

 force; for it scraped the plaster off' the wall in many different and distant places, 

 both in the chamber and kitchen, and to the south-west of the chamber, where 

 was the window, broke many panes of glass, and tore the lead outwardly, with- 

 out melting it ; and broke two panes of the kitchen window, with its lead, si- 

 tuated under the chamber window. Both kitchen and chamber smelt as strong 

 of sulphur some hours after, as if fumigated with brimstone matches. 



VIII. Experiments concerning the Encaustic Painting of the Ancients. By Mr. 

 Josiah Colebrooke, F. R. S. p. 40. 



The art of painting with burnt wax, as it is called, has long been lost to the 

 world; the use of it to painters, in the infancy of the art of painting, was of 

 the utmost consequence, drying oil being unknown, they had nothing to pre- 

 serve their colours entire from the injury of damps, and the heat of the sun; 

 a varnish of some sort was therefore necessary; but, being unacquainted with 

 distilled spirits, they could not, as we now do, dissolve gums to make a trans- 

 Darent coat for their pictures; this invention therefore of burnt wax supplied that 

 detect to them, and with this manner of painting, the chambers and other 

 rooms in their houses were furnished; this Pliny calls encaustum, and we encaustic 

 painting. 



The following experiments were occasioned by the extract of a letter from the 



