VOL. LXVI.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. Ql 



A gentleman, who was riding near the marshes not far distant from this town, 

 saw 1 strong flashes of lightning, seemingly running along the ground of the 

 marsh, at about Q o'clock in the evening. On Monday morning, when the ser- 

 vants of Mr. Rogers, a farmer at Swanborough, in the parish of Iford, went 

 into the marsh, to fetch the oxen to their work, they found one of them, a 4- 

 year old steer, standing up, to appearance much burnt, and so weak as to be 

 scarcely able to walk; and by the description of it, it seemed to have been struck 

 with lightning in a very uncommon manner. The ox is of a red and white co- 

 lour; the white in large marks, beginning at the rump-bone, and running, in 

 various directions, along both the sides; the belly is all white, and the whole 

 head and horns also white. Tlie lightning, with which it must have been struck, 

 fell on the rump-bone, which is white, and distributed itself along the sides, in 

 such a manner, as to take off all the white hair from the white marks as low as 

 the bottom of the ribs, but so as to leave a list of white hair, about half an inch 

 broad, all round where it joined to the red; and not a single hair of the red was 

 touched. The whole belly is unhurt, but the end of the sheath of the penis 

 has the hair taken off; it is also taken off from the deulap; the horns and the 

 curled hair on the forehead are uninjured, but it is taken off the sides of the 

 face, from the flat part of the jaw-bones, and it is taken off from the front of 

 the face in stripes. There are a few white marks on the side and neck, which 

 are surrounded with red, and the hair is taken off from them, leaving half an 

 inch of white adjoining to the red. No hair was taken from the feet or legs, 

 they were very dirty, except from the joint a little above one of the hoofs, where 

 it was partly off. The farmer anointed the ox with oil for a fortnight; the ani- 

 mal purged very much at first, and is greatly reduced in flesh. 



But though all the white hair on the upper parts was taken away, yet the tuft 

 of white hair on the forehead never received any hurt at all. A Mr. Tooth, a 

 farrier and bullock-leach, said, that this circumstance is not new to him; that 

 he has seen a great many jiyed bullocks struck by lightning in the same manner 

 as this, both in his father's time, his father being of the same trade, and since; 

 and that the texture of the skin under the white hair was always destroyed, 

 though looking fair at first; and after a while it became sore, throwing out pu- 

 trid matter in pustules, like the small-pox with us, which in time falls off, when 

 the hair grows again as before; and that the bullocks receive no further injury. 

 In this state Mr. Lambert found Mr. Rogers's bullock, the 2d time he saw it, 

 which was about a month after the first visit; some of the scabs were then 

 dropping off, and the hair was coming on afresh. He remembers perfectly well, 

 that all the cattle that he had seen, which were killed by lightning, were either 

 black, brown, or red, without any white at all in them. This bullock is both 

 marked and affected by the stroke exactly alike on both sides. 



