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Extraordinary Properties and Effects of Light

NING. A very surprising property of lightning of the zigzag kind, especially when near, is, its seeming omnipresence. If two persons are standing in a room looking different ways, and a loud clap of thunder, accompanied with zigzag lightning, happens, they will both distinctly see the flash, not only by that indistinct illumination of the atmosphere which is occasioned by fire of any kind, but the very form of the lightning itself, and every angle it makes in its course, will be as distinctly perceptible as if both had looked directly at the cloud from whence it proceeded. If a person happened at that time to be looking on a book, or other object which he held in his hand, he would distinctly see the form of the lightning between him and the object at which he looked. This property seems peculiar to lightning, and to belong to no other kind of fire whatever. In August 1763, a most violent storm of thunder, rain, and hail, happened at London, which did damage in the adjacent country to the amount of £50,000. Hailstones fell of an immense size, from two to ten inches in circumference, but the most surprising circumstance attending the hurricane was, the sudden flux and reflux of the tide in Plymouth pool, exactly corresponding with the like agitation in the same place, at the time of the great earthquake at Lisbon. Instances have also occurred where lightning, by its own proper force, without any assistance from those less common agitations of the atmosphere or electric fluid, has thrown stones of immense weight to considerable distances; torn up trees by the roots, and broke them in pieces; shattered rocks; beat down houses, and set them on fire, &c. The following singular effect of lightning, upon a pied bullock, is recorded in the sixty-sixth volume of the Philosophical Transactions.- " In the evening of Sunday the 28th of August, 1774, there was an appearance of a thunder storm, but we heard no report. A gentleman who was riding near the marshes not far from this town, (Lewes) saw two strong flashes of lightning running along the ground of the marsh, at about nine o'clock P.M. On Monday morning, when the servants of Mr. Roger, a farmer at Swanborough, went into the marsh to fetch the oxen to their work, they found one of them, a four-year-old steer, standing up, to appearance much burnt, and so weak as to be scarcely able to walk. The animal seemed to have been struck by lightning in a very extraordinary manner. He was of a white and red colour; the white in large marks, beginning at the rump bone, and running in various directions along both sides; the belly was all white, and the whole head and horns white likewise. The lightning, with which he must have been undoubtedly struck, fell upon the rump bone, which was white, and distributed itself along the sides in such a manner as to take off all the hair from the white marks as low as the bottom of the ribs, but so as to leave a list of white hair, about half an inch broad, all round where it joined to the red, and not a single hair of the red appears to have been touched. The whole belly was unhurt, but the end of the sheath of the penis had the hair taken off; it was also taken off from the dewlap: the horns and the curled hair on the forehead were uninjured; but the hair was taken off from the sides of the face, from the flat part of the jaw-bones, and from the front of the face, in stripes. There were a few white marks on the side and neck, which were surrounded with red; and the hair was taken off from them, leaving half an inch of white adjoining to the red. The farmer anointed the ox with oil for a fortnight; the animal purged very much at first, and was greatly reduced in flesh, but afterwards recovered." In another account of this accident, the author supposes that the bullock had been lying down at the time he was struck; which shews the reason that the under parts were not touched. "The lightning, conducted by the white