=Precaution Against Rival Conductors.=--But it is not enough to provide a good lightning conductor, which is itself able to convey the electric discharge harmless to the earth; we must take care that there are no rival conductors near at hand in the building, to draw off the lightning from the path prepared for it, and conduct it by another route in which its course might be marked with destruction. This precaution is of especial importance at the present day, owing to the great extent to which metal, of various kinds, is employed in the construction and fittings of modern buildings. I will take a typical case which will bring home this point clearly to your minds. A great part of the roof of many large buildings is covered with lead. The lead, at one or more points may come near the gutters intended to collect the rain water; the gutters are in connection with the cast-iron down-pipes into which the water flows, and these down-pipes often pass into the earth, which, under the circumstances, is generally moist, and, therefore, in good electrical contact with the metal pipes. Here, then, is an irregular line of conductors, which, though it has gaps here and there, may, under certain conditions, offer to the lightning discharge a path not less free than the lightning conductor itself. What is the consequence? The flash of lightning, or a part of it, will quit the lightning rod, and make its way to earth through the broken series of conductors, doing, perhaps, serious mischief, as it leaps across, or bursts asunder, the non-conducting links in the chain. Another illustration may be taken from the gas and water-pipes, with which almost all buildings in great cities are now provided, and which constitute a network of conductors, spreading out over the walls and ceilings, and stretching down into the earth, with which they have the best possible electrical contact. Now, it often happens that a lightning conductor, at some point in its course, comes within a short distance of this network of pipes. In such a case, a portion of the electrical discharge is apt to leave the lightning conductor, force its way destructively through masses of masonry, enter the network of pipes, melt the leaden gas-pipe, ignite the gas, and set the building on fire. These are not merely the speculations of philosophers. All the various incidents I have just described have occurred, over and over again, during the last few years. You will remember, in some of the examples I have already set before you, when the electric discharge failed to find a sufficient path to earth through the lightning rod, it followed some such broken series of chance conductors as we are now considering. But this broken series of conductors seems to bring with it a special danger of its own, even when the lightning conductor is otherwise in efficient working order. I will give you just one case in point.