WATER-PIPES ON A DISCHARGE OF LIGHTNING. 115 



watches of several members of the congregation who were 

 seated in the vicinity of the gas-mains were so strongly 

 magnetized as to be rendered unserviceable. 



The church at Crumpsall is about a mile distant from 

 that at Kersal Moor ; and the ignition of the gas by 

 lightning, which undoubtedly caused its destruction, is not 

 so distinctly traceable as it is in other cases which have 

 come under my observation, because the evidences of the 

 passage of the electric discharge have been obliterated by 

 the fire. From information, however, communicated to me 

 by the clerk in charge of the building as to the arrangement 

 of the gas-pipes, the most probable course of the electric 

 discharge was ultimately found. 



The church is provided with a copper lightning- 

 conductor, which descends outside the spire and tower as 

 far as the level of the roof. The conductor then enters a 

 large iron down-spout, and is carried into the same drain as 

 that in which the spout discharges itself. Immediately 

 under the roof of the nave and against the wall, a line of 

 iron gas -pipe extended parallel with the horizontal lead 

 gutter which conveyed the water from the roof to the iron 

 spout in which the conductor was enclosed. This line of 

 gas-piping, though not in use for some time previous to 

 the fire, was in contact with the pipes connected with the 

 meter in the vestry, where the fire originated, and was not 

 more than three feet distant from the lead gutter on the 

 roof. As no indications of the electric discharge having 

 taken place through the masonry were found, as in the 

 case of the church at Kersal Moor, it seems highly probable 

 that the lightning left the conductor at the point where 

 the latter entered the iron spout, and by traversing the 

 space between the leaden gutter and the line of gas-piping 

 in the roof found a more easy path to the earth by the gas- 

 mains than was provided for it in the drain. 



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