CHAP. IX.] LIGHTNING CONDUCTOR. 511 



secured from the perils of lightning by their innate 

 sanctity, their safety could scarcely be enhanced by the 

 addition of a diamond hoop. 



The conjecture is, therefore, forced on us, that the 

 Singhalese, in that remote era, had observed some phy- 

 sical facts, (or learned their existence from others,) which 

 suggested the idea that it might be practicable, by some 

 mechanical device, to ward off the danger of lightning. 

 It is just possible that having ascertained that glass 

 or precious stones acted as insulators of electricity, it 

 may have occurred to them that one or both might be 

 employed as preservative charms. Modern science is 

 enabled promptly to condemn this reasoning, and to 

 pronounce that the expedient, so far from averting, would 

 fearfully add to the peril. But in the infancy of inquiry 

 the observation of effects precedes the comprehension of 

 causes, and whilst it is obvious that nothing attained by 

 the Singhalese in the third century anticipated the great 

 discoveries relative to the electric nature of lightning, 

 which were not announced till the seventeenth or 

 eighteenth, we cannot but feel that the contrivance 

 described in the Mahawanso was one likely to originate 

 amongst an ill-informed people, who had witnessed 

 certain phenomena the sources of which they were un- 

 able to trace, and from which they were incapable of 

 deducing any accurate conclusions. 1 



1 I have been told that within a 

 comparatively recent period it was 

 customary in this country, from some 

 motive not altogether apparent, to 



surmount the lightning conductors 

 of the Admiralty and some other 

 Government buildings with a glass 

 summit. 



