4 16 Mr. Snow Harris on the Electrical Discharge 
undercharged surface (according to Franklin’s hypothesis) 
will be always attended by a whizzing noise. 
50. The protection which continuous conductors would af- 
ford if well and efficiently applied to ships is, I think, apparent 
in all the preceding cases, and when we consider that the masts 
are themselves conductors of electricity, and that by their 
position alone they determine the course of the discharge 
into the body of the hull, it becomes the more requisite to affix 
to them good conductors, which quickly disperse and reduce 
the electrical action to a state of quiescence. 
We have I think fair evidence of this in the trials hitherto 
made with the continuous fixed conductors applied to certain 
ships of the British navy. 
51. These ships have been exposed more or less in all points 
of the world. Lightning has not fallen upon them qftener 
than other vessels not so fitted ; and when it has done so no 
damage has arisen in any way, or has any destructive lateral 
effect, such as that contended for by Mr. Sturgeon, taken place. 
His comparison, therefore, of the effects of lightning on the 
Rodney with the “ probable effects ” (as he terms it) on my 
conductors, although he can find no instance of such probable 
effects^ is therefore purely hypothetical. If Mr. Sturgeon has 
no good authenticated fact to oppose to the mass of evidence 
I have adduced, of what avail is any hypothetical or loose 
opinion he may find it convenient to advance ? 
52. Before concluding this communication, I cannot re- 
frain from pointing out the apparent inconsistencies of his 
views on this point. Having described my conductors as 
dangerous and objectionable in every possible way, as cal- 
culated to induce oblique flashes of lightning to strike the 
ship to the destruction of the sailors’ lives, the sails, rigging, 
&c. &c., he says, sect. 221, on discovering that he could not 
conveniently apply his own rods above the top-mast head, 
as however every chance of danger to the me?i and. every 
species of damage to the vessel ought strictly to be avoided^ it 
still appears desirable to furnish the top-gallant rigging with 
conductors ; and perhaps those which would give the least 
trouble to the men, would be strips of copper let into grooves 
in the masts according to the plan proposed by Mr. Harrisi’^ 
Now, I think, it must be clear to any one, that if my system 
be so objectionable as he would have it believed, on the 
grounds above stated, it must be equally objectionable on the 
top-gallant masts; the lives of the sailors are just as much 
exposed there as at any other point, perhaps more so. Mr. 
Sturgeon himself admits that two men were killed there in 
