‘The protector is copper throughout, and, with the exception of the termination, seems to have been carefully and efficiently placed. The diameter I estimate to be half-inch, or it may be a trifle more. Just at the point where it leaves the pipe and enters the ground, the electric charge left it, dashed through three feet or more of solid wall supporting the tower, in order to reach the gas-meter inside, then it passed safely along the gas-pipe. The cavity made was considerable, but very irregular. I was unable to ascertain when the workmen were engaged in repairs, and therefore cannot give their estimate of the weight of stone displaced, but it must have been many hundredweights, though only a few pounds were actually thrown out on to the path, or inside into the vault. A large quantity of stone was pulverised, and the whole gave one the idea of the explosion of a charge of gunpowder under great compression. In a house about 100 yards from the church, the inmates felt the shock intensely, but did not know that the house had been touched. Some hours after, however, on going to turn on the gas, a hissing noise was heard, and a hole was found in the composition gas-pipe, about five-eighth inch diameter, just where the pipe passed within an inch of a water-pipe. The lightning must have come along the main from the church gas-pipe to this house, and then passed to the water-pipe as the readiest way to moist earth. The whole soil in the neighbourhood is mountain limestone, very dry. There is not the slightest evidence of displaced plaster, or any other sign of the passage of an electrical discharge through the house.’ There need be little comment on the facts stated in this letter, notable though they are. It is the old delusion that a lightning conductor need be brought down underground only, and that then all is right. In this case, those who protected Christchurch, Clevedon, thought it quite sufficient to bring the conductor down into a drain-pipe carrying rain-water from the roof, without reflecting for a moment that an earthenware drain-pipe would insulate the conductor from ‘earth.’ A similar instance came under the writer’s notice about a year ago. One of the pinnacles of Cromer Church, in Norfolk, was struck by lightning, although fitted with a conductor on one of the pinnacles. On examination it was discovered that the earth terminal had been inserted into an earthenware drain.