It is a matter of regret that Franklin used the words "the electric fluid is attracted by the points" in the passage quoted above, inasmuch as in the popular mind such "attraction" courts rather than averts danger. As already said, the rod no more "attracts" lightning than a rain-pipe attracts a downpour. Franklin knew very well the twofold function of his rods, the _preventive_, by which they tend to ward off the stroke by gradually and silently neutralizing the excessive energy of the cloud; and the other, the _preservative_, by which they convey the discharge safely to earth when struck. He even complains of people who concentrate their attention on the preventive function, forgetting the other entirely, adding that, "Wherever my opinion is examined in Europe, nothing is considered but the probability of these rods preventing a stroke, which is only a part of the use which I proposed for them; and the other part, their conducting a stroke which they may happen not to prevent, seems to be totally forgotten, though of equal importance and advantage." (1755.) At a time, it was customary to make the rods rise to a considerable height above the building, in the belief that the diameter of the circle of protection was four times the height of the rod. Such a rule was an arbitrary one which facts soon showed to be unreliable and unsafe. It is now recognized that there is no such thing as a definite area of protection. Were this a literary chapter, we would point out that either of the expressions "electric" storm or "lightning" storm is preferable to _thunder-storm_, because electricity or lightning is the active agent or principal feature of the impressive phenomenon. No one thinks of calling a hailstorm by the descriptive term of _patter-storm_; yet that would be just as logical and appropriate an appellative in one case as thunder-storm is in the other. _Thunder-tube_ is certainly a startling misnomer applied to the long, narrow, glazed tubes formed in siliceous materials by the fervid heat of the flash, but not in any way by the sound-waves produced by the crash. _Thunder-bolt_ does not mean, despite the common opinion, a white-hot mass that accompanies the discharge; it is purely and simply the flash itself. A glowing mass that happens to come down in the track of the discharge is a _meteorite_, a body of cosmic not terrestrial origin, a visitor from space that chose the rarefied path of the flash for its descent to earth. Again, there are no _thunder-clouds_ in nature, only electric clouds or lightning clouds; nor is there ever _thunder in the air_ save when the lightning breaks from cloud to cloud, or leaps from cloud to earth, or strikes from earth to cloud. But though thunder is only occasionally in the air, electricity always is. We have a normal electrical field in all seasons, times and places.