“The lightning rent from Ariosto’s bust The iron crown of laurel’s mimicked leaves, Nor was the ominous element unjust, For the true laurel wreath which glory weaves Is of the tree no bolt of thunder cleaves, And the false semblance but disgraced his brow; Yet, still, if fondly superstition grieves, Know, that the lightning sanctifies below Whate’er it strikes--yon head is doubly sacred now.” The identification of electricity with lightning is a comparatively recent occurrence. The story of Benjamin Franklin, patron saint of the devout lightning-rod agent, is too familiar to require repetition. Yet, the idea was first broached in the latter part of the seventeenth century by two students of the new force, more than fifty years before Franklin’s experiments. Thunder clouds usually float from two thousand to five thousand feet from the earth; but there is one case on record of two priests being killed by lightning from a cloud only thirty yards from the ground; while another thunder storm is noted as having occurred eighteen thousand feet from the earth. As sound travels about one thousand and ninety feet per second, any one may ascertain the distance of a flash by noting the time that elapses ere the thunder is heard. All existing records fail to tell of thunder heard more than four miles; while the cannonading at Paris in 1871 could be heard one hundred and five miles; and Waterloo could be heard one hundred and fifty miles. The action of lightning is instantaneous, and when near by the report is at first a single sharp crack; but it is always followed by a long rolling, so characteristic that every name given the thunder in a measure endeavors to imitate it. The reason of the continued roll from a single flash is simple, and is to be found in the fact that a flash usually travels several miles; and as sound travels as stated above, the sounds generated at different distances come to the ear in rapid succession, resulting in a continuous roar. As the flash is due merely to the attraction between two bodies charged with opposite kinds of electricity, the discharge may pass either up or down. Cases are on record of persons on a mountain side being killed by lightning from a cloud below them, and of people on the ground killed by lightning dashing from them toward the sky. Among the more notable fatalities resulting from lightning may be mentioned the terrible thunder storm of 1793, at Buenos Ayres, when the lightning struck thirty-seven times within the city, and killed nineteen people. A number of persons were killed on June 18, 1872, in England, at different places; and numerous others perished within the month from similar discharges.