168 Things not generally Known. 



communication is continued by the rain-water pipes to the lead-covered 

 roof, and thence by lead water-pipes which pass into the earth ; thus 

 completing the entire communication from the cross to the ground, 

 partly through iron, and partly through lead. On the clock-tower a 

 bar of iron connects the pine-apple at the top with the iron staircase, 

 and thence with the lead on the roof of the church. The bell-tower is 

 similarly protected. By these means the metal used in the building is 

 made available as conductors ; the metal employed merely for that pur- 

 pose being exceedingly small in quantity. Curiosities of London. 



VARIOUS EFFECTS OF LIGHTNING. 



Dr. Hibbert tells us that upon the western coast of Scot- 

 land and Ireland, Lightning cooperates with the violence of 

 the storm in shattering solid rocks, and heaping them in piles 

 of enormous fragments, both on dry land and beneath the 

 water. 



Euler informs us, in his Letters to a German Princess, that 

 he corresponded with a Moravian priest named Divisch, who 

 assured him that he had averted during a whole summer every 

 thunderstorm which threatened his own habitation and the 

 neighbourhood, by means of a machine constructed upon the 

 principles of electricity ; that the machinery sensibly attracted 

 the clouds, and constrained them to descend quietly in a dis- 

 tillation, without any but a very distant thunderclap. Euler 

 assures us that " the fact is undoubted, and confirmed by irre- 

 sistible proof." 



About the year 1811, in the village of Phillipsthal, in East- 

 ern Prussia, an attempt was made to split an immense stone 

 into a multitude of pieces by means of lightning. A bar of 

 iron, in the form of a conductor, was previously fixed to the 

 stone ; and the experiment was attended with complete success ; 

 for during the very first thunderstorm the lightning burst the 

 stone without displacing it. 



The celebrated Duhamel du Monceau says, that lightning, 

 unaccompanied by thunder, wind, or rain, has the property of 

 breaking oat-stalks. The farmers are acquainted with this 

 effect, and say that the lightning breaks down the oats. This 

 is a well-received opinion with the farmers in Devonshire. 



Lightning has in some cases the property of reducing solid 

 bodies to ashes, or to pulverisation, even the human body, 

 without there being any signs of heat. The effects of lightning 

 on paralysis are very remarkable, in some cases curing, in others 

 causing, that disease. 



The returning stroke of lightning is well known to be due 

 to the restoration of the natural electric state, after it has been 

 disturbed by induction. 



