446 ATMOSPHERICAL PHENOMENA. 
body, or through a space in which tlie best ^ 
disposed in an irregular manner, always exliihds 
appearance. 
• A 
Lightning strikes the highest and most pointed ^piiy 
LLlAli ULJ^ Ali^XiL.AL Ctilil XiJL/9L jA 
its way, in preference to others, as high hills> t Wj 
‘ receive aj? . ^ f 
tiiose 
masts, &c. ; and all pointed conductors 
off the electric fluid more readily than ^ 
terminated by flat surfaces. ■ Lightning is observe 
the best and readiest conductor; and this is vK, 
with electricity, in tlie discharge of the jer-s’^r 
whence Doctor Franklin interred that, in a thu" ..-et* j 
»VAA'^ll^,l-. a^ULlUl X'lcUJXVUU tmciicu UlUl, U1 tl ^ 
it would be safer for ii person to have lus ^ 
dry. Lightning burns, dissolves metals, fends 
ticular bodies, such as the roots and branches^ 
0 ? 
strikes persons with blindness, destroj’s aniinid 
magnets of their virtue, and reverses their poles; 
ill'-* 
the well known [iroperties of electricity. 
Lightning not only gives polarity to the 
out to all bodies which have any portion of iron ' 
brick, &c. ; and, by pbsciTing which way 
these bodies lie, the direction in which the Strok® 
may be known with the utrooat certainty. 
In order to demonstrate, by actual expe'"' 
identity of the electric fluid with the matter of a 
— - - ■ ‘ 'd,. 
D6ctor Franklin contrived to bring lightnii'S 
heavens by means of an electrical kite, 'vh‘cl> 
the approach of a thunder sttirni; and, with 
and I’ ■ 
thus obtained, charged phials, kindled spirits, a”” fesk , 
ail other electrical experiments, as they are iistit'*/^ 
by an excited globe or tube. I'his happeu®d 
month after the French electricians, pursuing .for/V/ 
which he had proposed, had verifled the satn® * ’ 
without any knowledge on his part of what fiS _^|fi 
On the following year, he further discovered * ''' 
and that, in the course of 
change from positive to negative electricity s®' ^ 
H e was not long in perceiving that this imp®'’*' 
sometimes electrified positively, and sonietim®^ tliSt,ii 
one thunder-stornS) ,j t'' -t 
was capable of being applied to practical use ; 
a method, which he soon accomplished, of st’dd!.' j^iid*'' 
from being damaged by lightning, by means of 
che use of which is now universally known 
