The nature and extent of the injury inflicted by lightning, depend upon the intensity and direction of the electrical discharge, and vary greatly in degree; by far the greater number of flashes are harmless discharges from one cloud to another, and the instances in which it strikes the earth are comparatively rare: when however this does occur, and it directs its course through a human being, it may expend its influence upon the surface, and produce partial or general vesications.[56] Sometimes the clothes of the person have been violently rent, and the metallic substances about them melted; or it may pass through the body, without including the clothes, and it may occasion death without injuring the organic structure of any part of the body: or it may pass through only a particular portion of the body, and produce local injury. But it has happened that persons have been struck when the tempest has appeared to be at a considerable distance; this has been explained by Signor _Beccaria_, by supposing that it is a discharge of electric fluid from the earth, occasioned by the passing of a cloud that has just before, in the elemental strife, been rendered negatively electric. Lord _Stanhope_ distinguishes such a discharge by the name of the _Returning Stroke_.[57] As a provision for personal security during a thunder storm, a few precautions are necessary, and we are induced to notice them in this place, as their history is necessarily involved in our enquiries concerning death by lightning. In the open air, shelter ought not to be sought immediately under trees, for should they be struck, such a situation would be attended with the most imminent peril: on the contrary, the distance of twenty or thirty feet from such objects, may be considered as affording a place of safety, for should a discharge take place, they will most likely receive it, and the less elevated bodies will escape. Any surface of water, and even the streamlets that may have resulted from a recent shower should be avoided, for being excellent conductors, the height of a man, when connected with them, is very likely to determine the course of an electrical discharge. The partial conductors, through which the lightning directs its course when it enters a building, are usually the appendages of the walls and partitions; the most secure situation is therefore the middle of the room, and this situation may be rendered still more secure by lying on a hair mattress, or even on a thick woollen hearth rug. The part of every building least likely to receive injury is the middle story, as the lightning does not always pass from the clouds to the earth, but is occasionally discharged from the earth to the clouds, as in the case of the “_returning stroke_;” hence it is absurd to take refuge in a cellar, as recommended by Dr. _Priestley_; indeed many instances are on record, in which the basement story has been the only part of a building that