On the Effects of Lightning 251 



" There is a case of a mug being thus spirited away from a man, 

 who had just been drinking out of it, and deposited undamaged in 

 a courtyard near. A youth of 18, holding up a missal from which 

 he is singing, has it torn out of his hands and destroyed. A whip 

 is whisked out of a rider's hand. Two ladies, quietly knitting, have 

 their knitting-needles stolen. A girl was sitting at her sewing 

 machine, a pair of scissors in her hand ; a flash of lightning, and 

 her scissors are gone and she is sitting on the sewing machine. A 

 farmer's labourer is carrying a pitchfork on his shoulder ; the light- 

 ning seizes it, carries it off fifty yards or so, and twists its two prongs 

 into corkscrews." 



" In a church at Dance (Loire), during vespers one day in June, 

 1866, a flash of lightning killed the priest and all the congregation, 

 knocked over the consecrated objects on the altar, and buried the 

 Host in a heap of debris" 



The tendency of the lightning flash to strip those whom 

 it strikes is attested by innumerable narrations. In the 

 Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons there is preserved 

 the whole suit of clothes, with also the heavy boots which 

 were worn by a man who was left naked, but not killed, by 

 a flash of lightning. The agent in these performances is, 

 no doubt, steam. In this instance, and probably in most 

 similar ones, the man was very wet when struck. His soaked 

 clothes were the best conductors about him, and the current 

 passed through them instead of through his body. Every- 

 where between the skin and the clothes steam was produced 

 and by its expansion the garments were blown off. Again 

 quoting from our author, we have : — 



" In June, 1903, at Saint Laurent la Gatine, thunder broke over 

 M. Fromentin while he was working a plough drawn by three horses. 

 Lightning killed the leader, and completely undressed M. Fromentin, 

 after burning his hat. 



"The same day, at Limoges, a farm servant named Barcelot was 

 struck under an oak. His corpse was completely naked and he had 

 a severe wound on his left side. 



" On August 20 of the same year, a violent storm broke over the 

 Isle of Re. A farmer, who was on his way to the station at Finaud, 

 was struck fifty yards from his own house. The lightning removed 

 all his clothes. 



"In 1894, the keeper of the Commune of Saint Cyr en Val, near 

 Orleans, was struck while on his rounds ; the fluid deprived him 

 of his clothes and removed all the nails from one of his shoes. 



