The great astronomer does not do a great deal of active star-hunting. He may not sit down exactly in an arm-chair, but he makes himself fairly comfortable at his work. That scientific person, however, with a hobby for photographing meteors must be active. He has to be on the full jump. He knows that at a fixed time of the year and in a particular part of the heavens there are to be found a stream of meteors. There is, however, little certainty about his catching a first-class one. The field of the camera not being large, he cannot sweep the whole heavens. So it often happens that though he may have secured an assorted lot of meteors, the one particular and brilliant shooting star which he has seen with his eyes has escaped his camera. Meteors do not pose. That is not in their nature. If the meteor is eccentric, what about the flash of lightning? You may have any number of storms during a summer, but they are not always accompanied with visible electrical phenomena. There may be plenty of lightning, however, but not in your horizon. But say there is a first-class storm, and with lightning. You have read the meteorological data for the day, and can in a measure anticipate this storm. If you are weatherwise, you know your local conditions, where is north, south, east, and west, and if experienced, you ought to be fairly certain as to the possible direction the storm should come from. Anyhow, you are prepared and have everything ready. Even should the lightning come, as far as taking its picture goes you may be disappointed. The storm may move so rapidly that all the electrical phenomena occur directly overhead or back of you. There may be what seems to you but a feeble discharge of electricity, but it is its distance from you which makes you think so. Then the flash is so far away that the light of it is insufficient, and so a poor, dull, uncertain picture is the resultant. It is quite a feat to take a first-class flash of lightning, and with reluctance I am forced to conclude that there is much luck about it. But if chance enters for nine-tenths in the photography of lightning, there is the one single tenth which is constantly in your favor--that is, if you are adaptive, watchful, and always ready. You may look for lightning a whole summer and never catch a fine flash, through no fault of your own; and the very next summer, at a first essay, you may secure a magnificent print.