52 Some Curious Effects of Lightning at Gabo Island. 



the current number of the Melbourne Review returned 2 

 candidates not returned by the above process, and these were 

 returned on 13 votes each. 



Art. VII. — On Some Curious Effects of Lightning at 



Gabo Island. 



By Arnold Lilly. 



[Read August lOtb, 1880.] 



In the early part of January last I had occasion to visit the 

 lighthouse and meteorological station upon Gabo Island. 

 Two days before my arrival, on the 7th of the month, there 

 had been a very severe thunderstorm, which traversed all 

 the eastern districts of the colony and apparently came to a 

 climax in the neighbourhood of Cape Howe and Gabo Island; 

 here it raged for about three hours, accompanied by a full 

 gale of wind and a very heavy sea. From what Mr. Fanning, 

 the lighthouse-keeper, experienced in the lantern, and from 

 what was seen by others outside, there is no doubt that the 

 lighthouse was, in common parlance, struck by lightning. 

 The lighthouse, I should explain, is built of granite, with a 

 central iron column supporting the iron frame of the lantern 

 which contains the light. There is a wire conductor con- 

 nected with the lower part of the lantern, carried outside 

 the lighthouse down to its base, and over the rocks into the 

 sea, but there was apparently no pointed terminal upon the 

 roof. In this case the lightning appears to have travelled 

 down the iron column instead of down the wire conductor, 

 and to have met with bad earth contact where it passed into 

 the granite and concrete of the base, for Mr. Fanning states 

 that the whole lighthouse seemed to rock from its founda- 

 tions, and in the morning the pattern shown in the accom- 

 panying diagram was found traced in the sand, which was 

 lying about a quarter of an inch thick on the basement floor 

 of concrete ; this sand was left undisturbed until my visit, and 



