PRACTICAL, ARBORI COLT URE 23 
High mountains perform the same service, as they become the means of 
communicating electric currents. A plain from which fires have removed all 
trees and prevented others from growing has not the power of influencing air 
currents, and, as a rule, clouds pass over them. At long intervals extraordi- 
nary electrical disturbances occur and moisture is precipitated in unusual 
quantities during a brief period, causing freshets in valleys which were dry 
beds a day before. Such storms have been given the term, cloudbursts. 
Upon Pike’s Peak, along the chain of lakes which supply Colorado Springs 
with water, are telephone lines, as well as telegraph stations. Upon the sup- 
porting poles, above the wires, is a common barb fence wire, maintained as a 
lightning arrestor. Here on the mountain electrical disturbances are of com- 
mon occurrence, and it 1s necessary to provide safety conductors, rain, snow 
and electric storms being frequent. 
In riding over the divide recently I saw on a small area one hundred prom- 
inent trees which had received a lightning stroke. High mountains and prom- 
inent trees are objects which attract the electric current, while the violence 
with which the disturbance occurs gauges the quantity of moisture precipi- 
tated, or, in other words, reduces the ability of the atmosphere to hold moisture 
in solution. 
BRE CERICGAI NERGY. 
The atmosphere is capable of supporting a given weight of water when 
distributed in minute particles as vapor, the quantity which it can absorb and 
hold in suspension being variable, depending upon temperature and upon 
equanimity of electricity, which always accompanies cloud movements. Elec- 
tricity is rapidly absorbed, conducted and diffused by water. It is transferred 
through moist air currents to various parts of the earth. Electricity may be 
passive, as when its changes occur slowly and with regularity, or violent when, 
by contact with a good conductor, it is suddenly conveyed from cloud to earth, 
or the reverse. 
Violent electric energy decreases the ability of the atmosphere to retain 
moisture, and precipitation occurs in great quantities ; as these electric changes 
decrease the power of buoyancy of the atmosphere, a portion of its weight is 
discharged. 
Heavy clouds hang low upon the surface. The weight of moisture which 
they bear brings them in contact with objects upon the surface. If these are 
forests, the electric changes are constant, the regularity causing gentle show- 
ers. Ifthe obstacle is a prominent tree or spire, the bolt descends, the object 
is shattered, while a downpour of rain accompanies the violent energy. 
In passing over a mountain chain, abrupt peaks become the conducting 
medium, and snow is precipitated. 
CLOUDBURSTS. 
This has become a popular expression where extraordinary rainfall occurs. 
All showers are cloudbursts, simply varying in degree. When more violent 
