After minute examination, it was evident that the course of the lightning had been nearly as follows:—‘The flash first struck the gilded vane, marks of lightning being perceptible between its bevelled edges. After traversing the vane and spindle, and the terminating iron supports, the only path left for the fluid was through a series of iron cramps, separated by masses of sandstone; and here it was that the explosion commenced--the stone being torn and hurled aside as it came in the path of the lightning to the lowest lead lights of the spire. Most of these iron cramps were found to be powerfully magnetic; and one of them, eight weeks afterwards, sustained a very considerable brush of steel filings at its edges. The lattices of the lights on three sides of the spire were little injured; but on the fourth side the stone-work was shattered, and the lattice singularly twisted and partially fused. Here, it appears, another violent explosion took place, and the lightning diverging struck the north-west pinnacle, attracted apparently by the copper bolt by which the stones were held together. It also struck the large cast-iron pipe on the other side of the spire, reaching from the tower-battlements to the roof of the church; and during its passage down the pipe, and at an inequality in the surface of the metal, it displayed the most extraordinary expansive force, bursting open and scattering to a distance portions of metal of great solidity and weight. From the leadwork of the roof the lightning was conducted to the leaden gutters, and so finally to the earth. ‘The course of the remaining current in the interior of the tower was first to be traced on the lattices of the belfry, then in the clock-room, where the works of the clock were strongly magnetised, thence in at least three different directions to the outside of the tower. The external faces of the clock were not much altered, the hands were, however, slightly discoloured, and the blackened surfaces of the dials covered with streaks, as if smeared with a painter’s brush. On quitting the dial faces on the northern and southern sides of the tower, the lightning evidently fell upon the leads of the side lobbies, and was finally carried off by the two iron pipes connecting their roofs with the earth. Both these pipes were chipped and injured, and one of them was perforated, as if by a musket-shot, a few inches from the ground. The edges of this fracture were found to possess magnetic power. Thus, besides the division of the current at the upper part of the spire, there was a second division in at least three directions from the clock-room and dial faces. The roof of the church throughout its whole extent showed signs of an extraordinary diffusion of the electric current; and in almost every place where one piece of metal overlapped another, a powerful explosion had evidently taken place.’