84 Prof, E. Kellogg on the Passage of Lightning, 



P^JYSICS, MATHEMATICS, CHEMISTRY, ME- 

 CHANICS, &c. 



Art. XIV". — Prof. E. Kellogg on the passage of Light' 



ning. V 

 To the Editor, 



Some of the effects described below are such as are not 

 often produced by the descent of the electric fluid ; at least, 

 I have not witnessed them, nor seen them described. If 

 you think the account may interest your readers, please to 

 insert it in your Journal. 



On the 28th of May, 1824, the lightning fell upon a tree, 

 about a foot in diameter, standing one or two hundred yards 

 from the house of Ephraim Tucker, in Vernon, Conn. The 

 fluid left few marks of its course down the tree, but tore up 

 the earth very much at the foot of it and made, in one di- 

 rection, a furrow eight or ten feet in length, by following a 

 root that ran three or four inches below the surface, and 

 throwing oiFthe turf in ragged portions. No other effects 

 of the fluid were to be seen near the tree. At the distance of 

 thirty feet from the tree runs a post-wall, bounding the mead- 

 ow and separating it from the highway ; — a low wall of small 

 stones, surmounted by two rails supported by posts standing 

 in the wall. In the highway near the wall at this place, be- 

 gin to appear marks of the passage of the fluid below the 

 surface. The sod in some places seemed to be a little 

 raised along the line of its course towards the road. The 

 road here is formed in the middle of a highway sixty-six 

 feet wide, as turnpike roads are commonly built, by raising 

 a path twenty-feet wide or more, with earth taken from the 

 edges of it, which are thus sunk so as to form ditches com- 

 monly four or five feet wide, and one or two deep. From 

 the wall to the ditch,, and across the road and ditch, the 

 fluid certainly passed under grouad, and almost in a straight 

 line. Before reaching the ditch, it passed under a thick 



