EFFECT OF LIGHTNING ON COCONUT PALMS. 
33 
lightning. Some travellers — those of the German Loango Expedi- 
tion of 1873-76 for example — even distinctly report that, notwith- 
standing the extreme frequency of lightning in Africa, cases of 
damage inflicted by it are almost unheard of. Dmdng my own 
stay on the Congo, though I was eagerly on the lookout for 
instances of this kind, I did not succeed in authenticating a single 
case of injury due to the electric fluid. There was, indeed, a vague 
rumour among the natives of a man in some village having been 
struck dead and a “tshimbek” burnt down by lightning, but I 
could And no eyewitnesses of the fact ; and all the time I was in 
Africa I never saw a tree or other object which showed signs of 
having been struck by lightning. The only case of which I 
obtained any authentic report was that the coal magazine of the 
French factory at Banana was burnt down in consequence of a 
lightning stroke in March, 1882. I have been recêntly informed, 
however, that just a year after the destruction of the French coal 
magazine, the large gin store of the Dutch factory at Banana was 
similarly destroyed, a flash of lightning having kindled a great 
fire there, which lasted four days. As a result of these two 
accidents following so close on one another in the same locality, 
lightning conductors are now being set up at Banana, and the 
International Association of the Congo has had conductors fixed 
on all the magazines at Vivi. I find in Dr. Pogge’s journals, which 
I am now preparing for publication, an instance, witnessed by 
that traveller himself, of a man being killed by lightning. As far 
as my own researches go I find scarcely any literature concerning 
the use of lightning rods, or the frequency of accidents from 
lightning in the tropics,” &c. 
The foregoing communication elicited a letter from J. J. 
Me 5 n*ick Nature,” Vol. 31, page 194), who wrote as follows ; — 
My experience confirms the remarks of Dr. Von Danckelmann 
in “Nature” (page 127) respecting the little damage done by 
lightning in tropical countries. In the plains of India, at the 
commencement of the monsoon, storms occur, in which the 
lightning runs like snakes all over the sky at the rate of three or 
four flashes in a second, and thunder roars without a break for 
frequentty one or two hours at a time. During twelve years’ 
residence in India I heard of only two human beings, and, I think, 
three buildings, being struck, although in parts of Lower Bengal 
the population amounts to more than 600 to the square mile. I 
always attributed the scarcity of accidents to the great depth of 
the stratum of heated air next the ground keeping the clouds at 
such a height that most of the flashes pass from cloud to cloud 
and very few reach the earth. This idea is supported by the fact 
that in the Himalayas, at 6,000 feet or more above the sea, 
buildings and trees are frequently struck. I have seen more 
than a dozen pine trees which had been injured by the lightning 
on the top of one mountain between 8,000 and 9,000 feet high. 
In the British Islands thunderstorms are said to be more dangerous 
in winter than in summer, and such a fact if true can be explained 
6(6)15 (5) 
