STRANGE FREAKS OF LIGHTNING.

Southland Times, Issue 1010, 26 August 1868, Page 3

STRANGE FREAKS OF LIGHTNING.

Lightning, like light, furnishes another wonderful succession of marvels. How | delicate, how subtle ! It performs its I work sometimes with scarcely a touch. Enumerating a number, of instances, the author calls upon us to modify our vulgar ! potions of thunder and lightning. He says it is it most extravagant idea tQ co«nI pare the causes, of thunder and the effects | of lightning to the noise and. effects of I oanpan and cannon-ball j we are face to faoe with an essentially superior foroe, It might be said that it constitutes a transition between this world and a better one \ in foot, it ia really subject to transoeudental laws which our weak intelligence cannot grasp. This little volume is & repertory of facts, some of them most amusing, some of them of an abundantly terrible character. Illustrating this, he strikinglyeutitlesoneofhischapters. 'How did the bird get out of the cage P* He derives the expression from Plutarch. When we see animals or men cease moving, thinking, living, suddtnly, with out any appreciable change in their appearance or the mechanism of their organisation, ifc suggests the image of a cage, the door still closed, no damage done to a single wire, and yet the inhabitant gone. How did it get out ? The instances are numerous. Bodies have been killed repeatedly by lightning, and they have not given the slightest trace of any wound or scar, no slight touch of a burn or a contusion, no hint of the way by which the bird sprang from its confinement. Delicate and most subtle, we have said, has often been its work. Think of it melting a bracelet from a lady's wrist, yet leaving the wrist untouched ; think of its melting instantly a pair of crystal goblets suddenly, without breakingthem. Nay,as wesaidabove,some of its achievements are most humorous. Arago tells how the lighthing one day visited the shop of a Suabian cobbler, did ( not touch the artisan, but magnetised all his tools. One can well imagine the immense dismay of the poor fellow; his hammer, pinchers, and awl attracted all the needles, pins, and tacks and nails, and caused them to adhere firmly to the tools. The amazed shoemaker thought that everything in the shop was suddenly bedeviled", or else that he was dreaming. And there are several well-authenticated cases like this, showing that iron can be rendered magnetic by the electric current. "We read of a merchant of Wakefield, who had placed in a corner of his room a box of knives and forks, and iron tools, destined to be sent to the colonies ; in came the lightning, struck open the box, spread all the articles on the floor, and it was found when they were picked up that every one had acquired new proporties — they had all been affected by the subtle touch of the current. Some remained intact, others were melted, but they had all been rendered more or less magnetic, so that there was not a single nail in the box but might have served the purpose of a mariner's compass. Such anecdotes excite the sense of the marvellous ; and in popular st-ience they become windows through which the young inquirer is able to look abroad into the astonishing fields of nature. A great deal of scientific material has of course been reduced to such a matter of routine, that although there is not much scientific education, in any high sense of the word, some of the outer facts are known, and people may be prevented from making very grave mistakes. — " Eclectic and Congregational Eeview."