Teams and the persons accompanying them appear to be peculiarly in danger during a thunderstorm. Caves, and even deep mines, afford no absolute safety, for the thunderbolt has been known to enter even these. Tall trees are more dangerous than low ones, but none of them appear capable of affording protection against this mysterious element. The people of different countries have regarded various kinds of trees as exempt from the electric stroke, but inquiry has always shown that every species has suffered in one locality or another. The beech, from some cause, has probably escaped more generally than any other tree of considerable size in northern latitudes. But it is the neighborhood of a good conductor, not a sheltering non-conductor, that affords safety. Some scientific men have advised a station of fifteen to forty feet from a tree, or such a position between several trees, but it has sometimes happened that such open spaces have received the bolt. In cities and villages, likewise, open spaces are not found to be places of safety.[5] The question whether the small metallic articles usually carried about the person increase the danger is a matter of some concern. Many persons on the approach of a thunderstorm customarily relieve themselves of these things. Hair-pins, clasps and the metallic springs often used in the dresses of ladies are not, however, so easily got rid of. From the record of the effects of lightning upon the human body we reach the conclusion that metal is dangerous about the person only according to its position. Constantine mentions that during a thunderstorm a lady raised her arm to close a window, when a flash of lightning entered: her golden bracelet was entirely dissipated, but without the slightest injury to the wearer. A similar case is reported in the _Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal_ for 1844. During a violent thunderstorm a fishing-boat belonging to Midyell, in the Shetland Islands, was struck by lightning. The discharge came down the mast (which it tore into shivers) and melted a watch in the pocket of a man who was sitting close by, without at all injuring him. He was not even aware of what had happened until, on taking out his watch, he found it fused into one mass. Instances might be cited where a portion of the shoe was carried away without serious injury to the wearer, and where knitting-needles, scissors and other household implements have been struck, sometimes conducting the current to the person with fatal effect.