"I observed that the words which the lightning had not printed on the cloth, but had omitted, were done in red letters on the card, and were no more favoured nor ill-used than certain other marks without any significance also printed in red upon the card, and leaving no trace upon the altar-cloth." The author proceeds to explain the so-called mystery, ascribing it to the difference between the two inks--the thick black ink and the thin red ink. He examines also into the other phenomena, explaining them in the same way, like the sagacious and enlightened observer he was. It is clear, then, that the study of the phenomena of lightning is no new thing, and that it has been followed conscientiously for many centuries. In the case of the canon of the Mass printed by the lightning at Lagny, the reproduction was by contact and pressure--it was not a case of reproducing distant objects as though by photography. Here is another case hardly less remarkable. The narrative is from the pen of Isaac Casaubon, in his _Adversaria_:-- "On a summer's day, about 1595, while divine service was in progress in the Cathedral at Wells, two or three thunderclaps were heard, of so terrible a nature that the whole congregation threw themselves down on the ground. Lightning followed at once, but no one was hurt. The astonishing thing about the affair lies in the fact that crosses were afterwards found to have been imprinted upon the bodies of some of those present at the service. The Bishop of Wells assured the Bishop of Ely that his wife told him she had a cross thus imprinted upon her; and that on his being incredulous, she had shown it to him, and that he himself found afterwards that he, too, was thus adorned--on his arm, if I remember right. Some had it on their breast, some on their shoulders. It is from the Bishop of Ely I have these facts, which he tells me are well authenticated." What shall we say now of the photographing of a landscape on the inside of the skin of sheep which had been struck by lightning? The record of this seems well authenticated. In 1812, near the village of Combe-Hay, four miles from Bath, there was a wood composed largely of oaks and nut trees. In the middle of it was a field, about fifty yards long, in which six sheep were struck dead by lightning. When skinned, there was discovered on them, on the inside of the skin, a facsimile of part of the adjacent landscape. These skins were exhibited at Bath. This record was communicated by James Shaw to the Meteorological Society of London at its session of March, 1857. Here are his own words:-- "I may add that the small field and its surrounding wood were familiar to me and my schoolmates, and that when the skins were shown to us we at once identified the local scenery so wonderfully represented." Andrès Poey tells us of these other curious cases:--