Dr. Hibbert tells us that upon the western coast of Scotland and
Ireland, Lightning coöperates with the violence of the storm in
shattering solid rocks, and heaping them in piles of enormous
fragments, both on dry land and beneath the water.
Euler informs us, in his _Letters to a German Princess_, that he
corresponded with a Moravian priest named Divisch, who assured him
that he had averted during a whole summer every thunderstorm which
threatened his own habitation and the neighbourhood, by means of a
machine constructed upon the principles of electricity; that the
machinery sensibly attracted the clouds, and constrained them to
descend quietly in a distillation, without any but a very distant
thunderclap. Euler assures us that “the fact is undoubted, and
confirmed by irresistible proof.”
About the year 1811, in the village of Phillipsthal, in Eastern
Prussia, an attempt was made to split an immense stone into a multitude
of pieces by means of lightning. A bar of iron, in the form of a
conductor, was previously fixed to the stone; and the experiment was
attended with complete success; for during the very first thunderstorm
the lightning burst the stone without displacing it.
The celebrated Duhamel du Monceau says, that lightning, unaccompanied
by thunder, wind, or rain, has the property of breaking oat-stalks. The
farmers are acquainted with this effect, and say that the lightning
breaks down the oats. This is a well-received opinion with the farmers
in Devonshire.
Lightning has in some cases the property of reducing solid bodies to
ashes, or to pulverisation,--even the human body,--without there being
any signs of heat. The effects of lightning on paralysis are very
remarkable, in some cases curing, in others causing, that disease.
The returning stroke of lightning is well known to be due to the
restoration of the natural electric state, after it has been disturbed
by induction.