rs and gilded ornaments, he held, should likewise
be shunned. Contact with the walls or the floor or proximity to a
chandelier, a projecting gas-pipe, a position between two considerable
pieces or surfaces of metals, unless distant, are all hazardous.
Draughts of air are also to be avoided. Bell-wires may generally be
considered as protective, though too small to be effectual. Perhaps a
hammock, in addition to the preceding precautions, will afford as much
security as can be derived from insulation. But in a building having
continuous iron walls, posts or pillars from top to bottom, or in one
which is properly supplied with conductors in other forms, all the
foregoing precautions may be neglected without apprehension. Yet, as was
suggested early in this article, the great number of buildings damaged
by lightning while furnished with rods has caused much distrust of this
system of protection.

From the large number of trees receiving the electric current it has
come to be thought by many that these may be the best protectors of
buildings if properly placed. In a case coming under my observation a
tree received (or at least deflected) the current and communicated it to
the house. In many instances, however, the building is struck while tall
trees near by are untouched.

There is no doubt that lightning generally strikes elevated rather than
low objects, and therefore it has been thought that a building
surrounded by steeples had nothing to fear. As previously stated,
however, the bolt sometimes selects a low object when high ones are at
hand. For example, lightning fell upon a house occupied by Lord Tilney
in Naples, although it was surrounded on all sides, at the distance of
four or five hundred paces, by the towers and domes of a great number of
churches, all wet with a heavy rain.

In considering the matter of protection from lightning we must bear in
mind that trees, buildings, masts and other elevated points exert no
attractive power on the thundercloud except in connection with the great
plane where they are situated. The primary cause of the discharge is not
in the metals of the building, the exact point or line in which the
insulation by the air breaks down being determined by a variety of
causes. The elevated points of a building or ship may form a channel for
the passage of the current, but it is not the only one nor the cause of
the discharge, which would take place sooner or later though the ship or
buildin