

Whether Lightning Rods attract Lightning. 591 



Although the advocates of these opinions have never adduced 

 any substantial fact or any known law of electricity, in support 

 of them ; although they have never, by any appeal to experience, 

 6hown that buildings armed with lightning rods have been struck 

 by lightning more frequently than buildings not so armed, nor 

 demonstrated any single instance in which an efficient lightning 

 rod, properly applied, has failed to afford protection, — nevertheless 

 such views have been commonly entertained : indeed so strenuously 

 have they been insisted on, and that too by persons of education 

 and influence, that the Governor-General and Council of the Ho- 

 nourable the East India Company were led to order the lightning 

 rods to be removed from their powder magazines and other public 

 buildings, having in the year 1838 come to the conclusion, from cer- 

 tain representations of their scientific officers, that lightning rods were 

 attended by more danger than advantage; in the teeth of which con- 

 clusion, a magazine at Dum-Dum, and a Corning-house at Mazagon, 

 not having lightning rods, were struck by lightning and blown up.* 



In a work on Canada, published so lately as the year 1829,f we 

 find the following passage : " Science has every cause to dread the 

 thunder rods of Franklin : they attract destruction, and houses are 

 safer without than with them. "Were they able to carry off the 

 fluid they have the means of attracting, then there could be no danger, 

 but this they are by no means able to do." Assertions such as 

 these, appealing as they do to the fears of mankind, rather than to 

 their dispassionate and sober judgment, have not altogether failed 

 in obtaining that sort of temporary favour which so frequently at- 

 tends a popular prejudice, promulgated without reason, and received 

 without proof. Not only is the idea that a lightning rod invites 

 lightning unsupported by any fact, but it is absolutely at variance 

 with the whole course of experience. 



* Correspondence with the Honorable Board of Directors ; Professor Daniell and 

 Dr. W. B. O'Shaughnessy. Our readers may remember something of a controversy 

 on this subject in our pages a few years ago. If not, we beg to refer them to vol. 1. 

 pp. 431 and 439. It will there be found that the fallacies and absurdities regarding 

 lightning rods referred to by Mr. Harris, were pointed out, and some of the miss- 

 tatements on which they were founded fully exposed. — Ed. 



t Three years in Canada. By F. McTaggart, Civil Engineer in the service of 

 the British Government. 



