It is very probable that, besides the two causes just referred to which divert the path of lightning, there are many others of influence, at present entirely unknown. Numerous cases are reported where the electric discharge from the clouds touched precisely, and with singular accuracy, as if directed by a superior intelligence, the same spot, without the slightest reason being discoverable for such an action, after the most minute investigation by competent persons. Thus, on June 29, 1763, a violent thunderstorm broke over the village of Antrasme, near Laval, in France, the residence of a distinguished investigator of electrical phenomena, Count de Labour-Landry, a friend and correspondent of the Abbé Nollet as well as of Benjamin Franklin. The lightning struck, as carefully ascertained by the Count, first the steeple of the church, then sprang to one of the lower walls, where it fused and blackened the gilding of picture frames and some other metallic ornaments, melting also some pewter flasks used for sacramental purposes, and finally opened two deep holes, as regular as if they had been drilled with an auger, in a wooden table, placed within a recess of soft stone. All these damages were duly repaired; but, to the boundless surprise of the witnesses, the lightning struck the church almost exactly a year after, on June 20, 1764, entering the church by the same way as before, fusing and blackening the same gildings, melting the same flasks, and, in the end, driving out the very plugs of the wooden table inserted to fill the holes bored by the previous stroke of lightning. The account of the whole might seem almost incredible, were it not attested by independent eye-witnesses. Arago, with absolute faith in their testimony, remarks thereon that ‘those who will take the trouble of reflecting upon the thousands of combinations which might have caused the path of the lightning to have been different in the two cases, will, I imagine, have no hesitation in viewing, with me, the perfect identity of effect as demonstrating the truth of a proposition I put forward,’ namely, that ‘lightning, in its rapid march, is influenced by causes, or actions, dependent on the terrestrial bodies near which it explodes.’ In other words, lightning, like many other phenomena of earth, air, and water, is influenced by unknown causes. Hamlet says very much the same, when exclaiming: There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. After all possible explanations, Arago could get no further than Horatio, who thought that there was much in the universe which was ‘wondrous strange.’