40 RESOURCES OF CALIFORNIA. 
killed by lightning near the Lexington House, on the Coloma 
road, in Sacramento county. 
The weather never has that peculiar condition which isolates 
everybody electrically, and then fills them with electricity. In 
New York, on a dry winter evening, a man dressed in wool- 
len and shod in woollen slippers, after sliding along on the 
carpet a few steps, will accumulate so much electricity, that 
when he thrusts his finger at another person, a visible spark 
will fly off, and he can light gas with it! But this -amusing 
experiment, common as it is in the Eastern states, never has 
been successful, and probably never will be often practised, 
here. 
§ 31. AMail—Hail is a rarity; and instead of falling in July 
and August, as is usual in the Eastern states and Europe, it is 
seen in California only between February and May. On the 
10th of May, 1856, a storm of hail-stones, some of them weigh- 
ing twelve pounds each, visited a small district at Butte Creek, 
in Shasta county. It has several times happened that hail- 
stones more than an inch in diameter have fullen in the Sacra- 
mento valley. : 
The Aurora Borealis is seldom seen in California, perhaps 
not more than half a dozen times within the last ten years. 
The aurora of the 28th of August, 1859, seen over a great part 
of the world, was plainly visible in this state. 
§ 32. Harthquakes.— Earthquakes are common in some 
parts of California, and especially at San Francisco, Los An- 
geles, and near the Tejon Pass, at the southern junction of the 
Sierra Nevada and Coast Mountains. They are rare at Sacra- 
mento, Marysville, Vallejo, and Napa. As a general rule, they 
are less frequent and less severe in the northern than in the 
southern part of the state. The vicinity ot Humboldt is more 
eften shaken than any other place north of the bay of San 
Francisco. About a dozen earthquakes are felt in a year at 
different places in the state; not so many at one place. Most 
