woman by the roadside who was tending sheep,
and said, " Are you not afraid of the lightning?"
The words were scarcely out of his mouth when
a broad flash came down upon all four, killing
the gendarmes, and stunning the postman and
the woman; but doing them no more serious
injury. One of the gendarmes was completely
stripped; the fluid struck him on the back
of his head and ran down to his feet, burning
his clothes to tinder, tearing his boots to
bits, and driving his spurs and his porte-monnaie
a distance of several yards. His comrade had
no external mark beyond a slight wound on the
under lip. A curious circumstance is recorded
by the journal which gives the account of their
burial: One of the gendarmes did not belong
to the Catholic Church, and therefore was
buried in unconsecrated ground; but his
comrade, who was interred in the churchyard, was
laid on its very verge, so that their graves should
be brought side by side.

A wonderfully narrow escape from death was
experienced by a sentinel who was on guard at
Chatham; his face was scorched, and he was
quite unable to articulate for upwards of an
hour. The lightning struck the sword he was
wearing, perforated a round hole, melted about
two inches of the edge, and soldered the hilt to
his bayonet. It also fused the lock of his
musket and the iron ramrod together. After
this it wounded his left foot, completely
destroying the upper-leather of his boot. Sentinels
incur more than the usual risk on account of the
attraction of the arms they carry. During a
thunderstorm the best course would be to put
their muskets in one corner of the sentry-box, and
themselves as far away from it as the confined
space will allow, taking care to be a little more
careful than a certain sentry near Carignan, who
put his foot so near the butt of his musket that
it was severely wounded. It was during this same
storm that the lightning descended on the church
at Villa di Stellone, killed seven persons, and
wounded several others, among them the priest,
who had not the slightest recollection of what
he had been doing, nor could the people, who
carried away the dead bodies out of the church,
remember where they had brought them from.
This was attributed to the effects of the
electricity; but it may have been merely the
bewilderment produced by the tremendous noise
of the explosion.

A curious instance of the effects produced by
the electric fluid, occurred a week or two since to
two girls who were on their way to the market at
Bressuire, with a basket of live fowls slung from
their respective shoulders. They went chatting
along, when a few great drops of rain, which came
pattering down, warned them that a storm was at
hand. There happened to be an enormous rock
near, which projected over the road, and beneath
this they took refuge. Presently, without
previous warning, they were half stunned by a loud
report, and simultaneously with the report they
saw a ball of fire fall into the road a few paces
from where they were standing. The only effect
it produced on them was as though they had
been violently shaken. As soon as the storm
had passed over they continued their journey,
not a little agitated by what they had seen
and felt. It was not until they reached the
market that they became aware of the
exceedingly narrow escape they had had. On
their baskets being lifted from their shoulders,
they found that the whole of their fowls had
been stripped of their feathers in the cleanest
possible manner.

A case has just occurred at Hamoir, a
commune in the department of the Ourthe, where
a shepherd and almost the whole of his flock
were killed. The accuracy of the facts stated
are guaranteed by La Meuse. The keeper of
the flock was Hubert Wera, the son of the
farmer to whom it belonged. The approach of
the storm was so evident, that he at once
collected his flock and began moving homeward;
but, when he had reached a narrow gorge
through the mountains, the sheep formed
themselves into two groups with their heads pressed
close together, and would not move a step
further. Wera thereupon sat down under a
bush to shelter himself from the storm. His
brother, finding he did not return, went to look
for him, and just as he got within sight of him,
a terrific burst of thunder issued from the
clouds, such as nobody in the vicinity had ever
heard before. A frightful spectacle met his view:
his brother and the whole of his flock had been
struck by the lightning. It had descended on his
head, torn the whole of his hair off, ploughed a
deep furrow on his forehead and down his face and
chest, stripped off the whole of his clothes, tearing
them to ribands, and all this without shedding
a drop of his blood. The iron was torn from his
crook, and the handle was split in two pieces.
A small metal crucifix he carried was picked up
nearly twenty yards from his body. The flock
consisted of one hundred and fifty-two sheep,
one hundred and twenty-six of which were
killed; their wounds being of the most diverse
form: some having the head cut clean off;
others having it divided into two equal parts.
The limbs of some were torn from their bodies;
every imaginable form of mutilation was to be
seen among them.

The authorities of the commune, together
with the doctor, hastened to the spot; the latter
adopting every means at his disposal, such as
friction and artificial respiration, to restore the
unfortunate shepherd to life, but all his efforts
were unavailing.

They found, on examining the ground, that the
lightning had descended in a broad sheet: the
space it covered being about eighty yards in
length, and sixteen in breadth. A curious
circumstance attending this event was that
although the misfortune occurred at half-past six
o'clock on Thursday evening, on Friday morning
the bodies of the animals were in an
advanced stage of putrefaction.

On the Saturday following the event just
related, two men living at Perrigny, in the
Jura, took shelter from a storm beneath a
walnut-tree. An explosion was heard, and the