clutched his curly-brimmed hat between his fat
fists and hissed out, "A—h! Superbe!"
It was his testimony and it is mine!

LIGHTNING PICTURES.

THE first lightning picture I have read of, was
recorded by Benjamin Franklin. A man was
standing on the threshold of a house, when
lightning struck a tree right opposite to him,
and marked upon his breast a picture or counter-
proof of the tree. This fact was deemed too
marvellous to be believed. A committee of the
French Academy of Sciences being appointed
to investigate the circumstances in 1785, they
reported that the picture, or appearance, was
nothing more than a fortuitous effusion of
blood.

But the testimonies in support of lightning
pictures, from various quarters, have been too
concurrent and irresistible, and the corroborations
they have received from the progress of
discoveries and inventions have been too numerous
and striking, for the scepticism of learned men to
be any longer possible. It has been, moreover,
characteristic of learned men in all ages to
conceal their ignorance under contradictions and
unmeaning phrases; but now that the present
generation know so much more than their
predecessors did of the effects of light, the time
seems come when explanations may be obtained
instead of contradictions in reference to the
greatest of all the marvels effected by lightning.

ln 1825 a brigantine was at anchor in the
bay of Armiro, at the mouth of the Adriatic.
A horse-shoe was nailed, for luck, upon the
mizenmast, and a sailor was sitting on deck at
the foot of the mast. A thunder-storm coming
on, lightning struck the mast and killed the
sailor. When the body of this sailor was
examined by the crew, and by the authorities, an
exact representation of the horse-shoe was
plainly seen upon his back. Some time
afterwards, another sailor was killed on the deck of
another brigantine, in the Zantian roads. Up
in the rigging there was a metal number 44,
and when the body was examined there was
found upon his left breast a lightning picture of
the metallic number 44.

The report (Comptes Rendus) of the Academy
of Sciences for the 25th January, 1847, mentions
the case of a lady of Laguna who, whilst sitting
before an open window during a thunder-storm,
had a picture of a flower distinctly and ineffaceably
marked upon her leg.

The following case is narrated by a Dr.
Decapulo, of Zante, respecting a young man who
had been killed by lightning; I shall merely
translate his words. " Having stripped the
young Polili, we observed a tight cloth belt
round his loins, and in the lining of this belt we
found fourteen gold pieces, wrapped up in two
little paper packets. The packet on his right
side contained a Spanish pistole, three guineas,
and two half guineas; and, in the paper packet
on his left side, there were another Spanish
pistole, four guineas, one half guinea, and two
Venetian sequins. No trace of fire was
discernible either on the cloth, the paper, or the
money. Yet upon the right shoulder of this
victim of lightning, there were distinctly seen
six circles, which, preserving their flesh colour,
were all the more strongly marked upon the
blackened skin. These circles followed each
other, touching at a point, and were of three
different sizes, corresponding exactly to the gold
coins which the young man had in the packet
on the right side of his belt. These facts were
verified and attested by the magistrate who
investigated the case, and by the witnesses of
the thunder-stroke. I cannot conceive," adds
Dr. Decapulo, "how six coins which were piled
upon each other came to be here depicted
separately and in line."

One more illustration. This case I publish
on the testimony of some perfectly trustworthy
friends of mine resident in Boston,
Massachusetts. During a thunderstorm a woodsman
was felling a tree in a forest, striking hard
with his axe, and working with his head, arms,
and neck, bare. The lightning killed him. After
the storm he was found lying dead, and upon
his neck there was a picture of the forest trees
just opposite to the spot where he lay.

Scientific men will not now-a-days talk, in
presence of these facts, of fortuitous effusions
of blood. They now know a great number of
corroborative facts. M. Arago was acquainted
with most of the circumstances bearing on this
subject; and yet—in accordance, perhaps, with
the policy of all individuals and corporations
who set themselves up as authorities, never to
acknowledge an error—the perpetual secretary
of the Academy does not mention this effect in
his excellent work on thunder and lightning.
Almost every aspect of Lightning is considered
by him, except Lightning as a Limner.

The explanation of these engravings by
lightning remains to be discovered. Science
has still to discover the craft mysteries of
Thunder, the Photographer. But we know now
that there is electricity in everything. The
representations which certain objects make upon
each other by mere proximity— as when the
keyhole of a gold watch is found delineated upon
the inside surface of the case—have had the
attention of the inquisitive turned to them by
Meser and others. M. Fusinieri sent a spark of
artificial lightning from a gold ball through a
pretty thick silver plate, and showed on both
sides of it circular layers of volatilised gold.
Both these circles of gold on the plate of silver
were formed out of the gold in fusion in the
spark, and which went with the spark through
the plate. The air, we know, holds, at least as
high up as the region of storm-clouds, sulphur,
iron, and other metals in fusion, or gaseous
vapour; and it was from this fact that Fusinieri
explained the sulphurous stains on walls, and the
ferruginous marks on trees. There is said to
be iron enough in a man to make a knife, and in
twenty-four men to make a sword. There is
iron in our flesh and in our blood. The iron in