of Edinburgh, Session 1862-63. Ill 
seiited ill the assistant architect’s subsequent and independent 
drawing.* 
However anomalous, therefore, the case may appear at first, some 
theoretical principles are remarkably borne out by it ; and that the 
foot of the building should have been struck, and not the top, seems 
to follow from the low, level and almost horizontal direction in 
which the lightning was sensibly observed to come, and with the 
wind and rain, — causing thereby the windward foot of the tall 
building to become for that occasion the shortest passage for the 
fluid to reach the ground by. 
In such a case, though, it may be suggested, that the long hori- 
zontal wire extending through a length of 4000 feet between 
the Nelson Monument and the castle for the service of the time- 
gun, should have been most abundantly charged by induction. 
That is true ; and there is little doubt but that the said wire was 
copiously filled, and might have produced dangerous effects, had 
it not been furnished at either end with large copper plates in 
close proximity to many pronged conductors ending in wet earth, 
which led away innocuously the greater part of the charge. Enough 
however still remained to do some singular damage to the elec- 
trically controlled clocks at either end of the line. Thus, the 
members of one of the bundles of permanent magnets, near the 
pendulum-bob of the castle clock, had their poles changed and 
their new attraction made rather stronger than their old ; the 
members of a similar bundle in the Observatory window-clock 
had their poles partially changed ; and in the interior of the 
Normal Mean Time clock one of the gold contact points was 
partially fused, and spattered on its steel spring, which was blued 
at that part as though by heat. 
The gold contact point thus treated, it will be understood, was 
in direct metallic connection at the instant with the long open-air 
wire; and the magnets that were altered were in indirect connec- 
^ Professor Tait has also remarked, and it seems well worthy to he noted 
as a memorandum for any future occasion, that it would have been advisable 
to have preserved the hoarding at “ A,” as well as the lead ; for the manner 
of action and of piercing through wood by lightning is very ditferent to the 
burning action of flame; and thick wooden planking wa.s everywhere inter- 
posed between the gas-pipe and the leaden roof. 
