Notes and Extracts 



567 



NOTES AND EXTRACTS. 



[Continued from p. 548.) 



Statistics as to the relative liability of trees to be struck by 

 lightning, collected in Germany in the years 1879 and 1890, 

 recorded as follows : fifty-six oaks, three or four pines, twenty 

 or twenty-one firs, but not a single beech. It is said that 

 beeches were more common than all the others put together. 



The following note concerning Lightning and Trees, is 

 taken from Science Gossip, 1883, P- 2 35 : — " ^ ls no uncommon 

 thing to find the lower parts of a tree cut up by lightning 

 while the upper portions and the highest branches are hardly, 

 if at all, affected. Oaks, however, appear to be an exception 

 to this general rule. Professor Colladon (who has long been 

 studying the phenomenon in Switzerland) is of opinion that 

 this partial attack is due to the fact that the upper parts of a 

 tree contain more sugar than the lower, sugar being a good 

 conductor of electricity." We do not believe that oaks are 

 really any exception to this observation. They are seldom 

 struck high up. Usually the current enters at the base of a 

 dead branch. 



We have suffered much this spring at Haslemere from 

 heath fires, which in some instances havie spread into planta- 

 tions and woods. In a wood of large fir trees, which had 

 been thus burnt, the men in charge on the following day 

 poured bucketsful of water around the stems of the injured 

 trees. The fire had been gone some hours. What would be 

 gained by such a procedure ? Gilbert White has recorded 

 the belief that fire travelled down the roots of gorse and 

 shrubs into the soil and made it barren for several years. In 

 this instance, however, the wish was to save the trees, not the 

 ground. 



Vipers are still fairly common on the moors around Hasle- 

 mere and Hindhead. Every summer we have specimens in 

 our Vivarium. They will not feed, however, and about the 

 end of a couple of months when they look thin, we liberate 



