THE EFFECTS OF LIGHTNING. 



Sepulchre at Cremona, broke the iron cross which surmounted the tower, and 

 projected to a distance the weathercock, which revolved under the cross, and 

 which was made of copper, tinned, and coated with oil-paint. 



This weathercock was found to have been pierced with eighteen holes, nine 

 of which were very prominent on one side, and the other nine on the other. 

 As there was no appearance of more than one stroke of lightning, all these 

 holes must be supposed to have been pierced at once. The position of the 

 holes are such as would have been produced by blows imparted simultaneously 

 in opposite directions on parts of the metal nearly contiguous, and the inclina- 

 tion of the beards or projecting edges of the holes on one side correspond ex- 

 actly with those on the other, the directions of all the eighteen beards being 

 parallel. 



On the 3d of July, 1821, lightning struck a house at Geneva, and pierced 

 the tin which covered a part of the roof with several holes, leaving evident 

 marks of fusion. One piece of tin in particular, which covered the angle made 

 by a chimney with the surface of the roof near it, was pierced with three near- 

 ly circular holes, about an inch and three quarters in diameter, and about live 

 inches apart, measured from centre to centre. The metal at the edges of these 

 holes was bent, as it would have been by a force bursting through it in one 

 direction or the other. The edges of the two holes were bent on contrary 

 sides. 



On the night between the 14th and loth of April, 1718, the church of Goues- 

 non, near Brest, was struck by lightning with such force that it shook as if by 

 an earthquake. The stones of the walls were projected in all directions to a 

 distance of from fifty to sixty yards. 



The lightning which formerly struck the chateau of Clermont, in Beauvoisis, 

 made a hole twenty-six inches wide and the same depth in the wall ; the date 

 of the building of which was so far back as the time of Caesar, and which was 

 so hard that a pickaxe could with difficulty make any impression upon it. . 



On the night between the 21st and 22d of June, 1723, lightning struck a tree 

 in the forest of Nemours. The trunk was split into two fragments, one seven- 

 teen and the other twenty-two feet long. These fragments, so heavy, that one 

 of them would require the combined strength of four men, and the other that of 

 eight men, to lift it, were, nevertheless, projected by the lightning to the dis- 

 tance of about seventeen yards. 



In January, 1762, lightning struck the church of Breag, in Cornwall, the 

 southwest pinnacle of the tower of which it destroyed. A stone, weighing one 

 hundred and seventy pounds, was projected from the roof of the church to a 

 distance of sixty yards in the direction of the south. Another fragment of stone 

 was projected to the north to a distance of four hundred yards. A third was 

 projected to the southwest. 



About the middle of the last century, a rock of micaceous schist, measuring 

 105 feet long, 10 feet wide, and about 4 feet thick, was struck by lightning at 

 Funzie in Fetlar, in Scotland, and was broken into three principal fragments, 

 not counting smaller pieces. One of these fragments twenty-six feet long, ten 

 feet wide, and four feet thick, had been merely inverted in its position. An- 

 other twenty-eight feet long, seven feet wide, and five feet thick, was projected 

 over the hill to a distance of fifty yards. The remaining piece, forty leet long, 

 was projected in the same direction, with still greater force, and fell in the sea. 



On the 6th of August, 1809, at Swinton, about five miles from Manchester, 

 lightning struck the house of Mr. Chadwick, at 2, P. M. A sulphureous vapor 

 immediately filled the house. The external wall of a building erected against 

 the house as a coal-shed, was torn from its foundations, and raised in a mass. 

 It was transported, maintaining its vertical position, to some distance from its 



