442 



Arc the dangers which arise from Lightning so considerable 

 as to merit consideration ? 



Is the danger of being struck with lightning so great, that we ought 

 reasonably to attach importance to the means of guarding against it? 

 This question has different aspects, and it may be regarded in reference 

 to individuals, to dwellings, and to ships. 



In the centre of the great towns of Europe, mankind, it would at first 

 glance appear, are but little exposed. Lichtenberg says that he had 

 satisfied himself that during half a century, five men only were seriously 

 struck with lightning in the town of Gottingen ; of these five, three 

 only died. It it stated, with regard to Halle, that a single individual had 

 been killed by lightning in the interval between the years 1609 and 

 1825, that is to say in more than two centuries. At Paris, where tables 

 concerning the metropolitan welfare are kept with such regularity, the 

 chief officer of the Statistics of the Prefecture assured me that during 

 a great number of years not a single death had been notified as produ- 

 ced by lightning. Notwithstanding this, however, there were not want- 

 ing instances during the same period, and in the department of the 

 Seine, of individuals who had been so destroyed ; thus there was the 

 workman of whom we have recently spoken at page 112, in connec- 

 tion with ascending lightning ; there was also an husbandman killed in 

 the fields in the commune of Champigny, on the 26th June 1807; and 

 likewise a mower killed at Romainville, on the 3d of August 1811, when 

 he was running for shelter with a pitchfork in this hand. Hence it 

 must have liappened that the deaths from lightning were designated 

 and registered as deaths from accidents ; hence, too, we should probably 

 be much mistaken were we to receive as accurate, and true to the letter, 

 the number of deaths which Lichtenberg reports for Gottingen and 

 Halle. Nor would the risk of error be less were we to generalize these 

 results, by applying to all countries over the globe what had been 

 observed in one only, and in wishing to deduce from the experience of a 

 village what ought to be dreaded in a great city. Gottingen, Halle, 

 and Paris, it is said, scarcely reckon a single accident in a century ! 

 True; but let us notice what a little more accurate investigation 

 declares ; and for this end, I open very much at hazard, a few volumes 

 in which I read such particulars as the following : — 



On the night between the 26th and 27th of July 1759, a flash of light- 

 ning struck the theatre of the town of Feltre. It killed a great number 



