338 Mr. P. Clare on some Thunder-storms 



play of lightning in that part of the world, but never saw any- 

 thing like the coruscations that appeared that evening. 



Mrs. Clayton, of Adlington in Cheshire, whose residence 

 is situated three or four miles to the south of Marsden House, 

 also observed these brilliant coruscations, and likewise says 

 they appeared to proceed from left to right, or in a direction 

 contrary to the drawings in the Plate. 



Mr. Alderman Shuttleworth informs me that his sister-in- 

 law observed these remarkable coruscations of lightning in 

 the neighbourhood of Bolton, which, being twelve miles to 

 the north-north-west of Manchester, gives a much wider ex- 

 tent of country in which they were observed than the previous 

 accounts have stated. In the extract of a letter from her 

 which he has sent, she says, " I was at Bolton on the 16th of 

 July, and witnessed an awful storm of thunder and lightning 

 * * * # about eight a servant who was watching at an upper 

 window came to say that she saw rings of fire in the sky. 

 There was a large black cloud in the south-west; behind it 

 the heavens appeared to open, throwing forth sometimes 

 showers of brilliant sparks or of balls of fire, sometimes circles 

 of flame, sometimes fiery serpents, and at others forked light- 

 ning of unusual breadth, the clouds always edged with beau- 

 tiful sheet lightning." 



Mr. Joule, F.R.S., has published a highly interesting ac- 

 count in the Philosophical Magazine for August, of these re- 

 markable phaenomena as observed by him. He says, some 

 of the coruscations passed across the zenith ; and from the 

 time that elapsed between seeing them and hearing the thunder, 

 he considers their general elevation to have been about three 

 miles and a half: he likewise observed that the branches 

 moved from right to left, similar to what I saw, as shown in 

 the accompanying figures. His residence is about a mile and 

 a quarter to the west-north-west of mine. He has given a 

 sketch in the Magazine of the appearance observed by him, 

 which terminated in more numerous branches than those I 

 noticed; but though I did not observe any branches so much 

 fimbriated at the end as he has represented, yet Mrs. Clayton, 

 to whom I showed his account, said she saw some branches 

 very much like the figure accompanying his paper, but with 

 curves at the ends bent more inwards than in his figure. 



With regard to the identity of these luminous appearances 

 seen by different individuals, and the apparent difference in 

 the direction of their motion, as stated by the observers at 

 Buxton, Marsden House, Adlington and Wilmslow, com- 

 pared with the account given by the observers at Manchester 

 and its vicinity, it may be remarked that Marsden House is 



