440 Official Correspondence on the attaching of 



gives a sketch of the appearance exhibited by the spear head of the 

 Britannia on Government House, supposed to have been struck by light- 

 ning on the night of the 30th March 1838. Dr. O'Shaughnessy does not 

 inform us of what metal this spear head was composed, but simply 

 states it to have been metallic, and fixed on a wooden shaft. Supposing 

 the spear head to have been struck, it is natural to suppose that as the 

 discharge was sufficiently powerful to fuse the metal at its point of en- 

 trance, some similar indication of its intensity would have been given at 

 its point of exit, and we would therefore expect to find this at the 

 junction of metal and wood. We are not aware that Dr. O'Shaughnessy 

 is in possession of any evidence to prove that the metal was there fused, 

 or that the wooden shaft exhibited indications of having been subjected 

 to intense heat, and powerful disruptive force, as it must necessarily 

 have been, had the lightning passed through it in its course to the cop- 

 per sheeting of the dome, on which it is known to have impinged ; but 

 we have reason to believe that neither of these circumstances can be 

 substantiated, we cannot therefore resist the conviction which all our own 

 information tends to support, that the spear head of Britannia was never 

 struck at all. The accident occurred at night, and the sepoys on guard at 

 the time described the effect of the concussion as to them awful in the ex- 

 treme, so that from the noise and shaking of the chandeliers, the breaking 

 of the windows, and the general confusion, they believed, as they them- 

 selves expressed it, that the whole house was coming down. Now taking 

 this testimony as to the intensity of the concussion into consideration, 

 with the imperfect indication, afforded by the spear head and shaft as 

 to their having been struck (the actual fusion of the metallic point 

 being we conceive doubtful) and remembering that parts of the figure 

 itself were in a most insecure state, we cannot but think the fracture 

 of the arm which took place, arose not from the direct impact of the 

 lightning on the spear head, but from the concussion just described. 

 The opinion appears to receive farther confirmation from the circum- 

 stance that although the head of the Britannia was studded with iron 

 spikes, having their points upwards, no discharge, either direct or lateral, 

 took place to it — a result certainly unconformable to common experience 

 in such cases, since the lightning impinging on a conductor deficient 

 in capacity for carrying it off, generally passes to the nearest metallic 

 body. Experience it is true supports the idea of the spear head having 

 been struck, in so far as it shews that lightning usually strikes the 

 highest point first ; but in this case when we remember that this spear 

 head was no more than a small piece of insulated metal, and that 

 the entire dome around it was covered with copper, which independent 



