The following phenomenon, to which we have already alluded, is no less curious:-- On July 22, 1868, at about 7 o'clock in the evening, at Gien-sur-Cure (Nièvre), the thunder had been growling violently for some time, when all of a sudden the lightning struck a thatched house, which it set on fire. At the same time a woman who was in a house ten yards away, felt a shock, and saw the tiled floor rise beneath her. Her two sabots were broken on her feet, and a bottle of Holy Water with which she was blessing the house was broken in her hand, only the neck remained in her fingers. She herself suffered nothing but the shock. Nineteen of the tiles were flung in all directions. Here is another very remarkable case of _ascending lightning_, published in the _Comptes Rendus_ of the Academie des Sciences:-- At Porto-Alegre, on June 9, 1870, at 2 a.m., during a violent storm, on the property of M. Laranja e Oliveira, at Brazil, a servant was entering the house; he was about ten yards away, when a flash of lightning illuminated it; at the same moment he felt a great tingling in the flesh of his feet, then in his legs, then all over his body, and finally in his head, on which the hair stood on end to such an extent that _he was obliged to hold his hat on_ in order to prevent its falling off. At the same time, a white flame burst from the ground about two yards in front of him, accompanied by a shower of sparks. Terrified by such a phenomenon, which he attributed to souls from another world, he thought he was petrified to the spot; finally, he ran away. Anything metallic which he had about him at the time of this occurrence became magnetized. A key which was in his pocket remained magnetic for two days. Thus, as well as the ordinary fulguration, in which the lightning (which we imagine descends from the clouds) acts directly on the body, and the lightning which strikes indirectly, there are other electric shocks which can be experienced by men and animals. Notable among these is the _striking from the earth_, commonly known as _choc de retour_, and which is in reality only an instance of the ascending current, or of lightning striking from a distance. We must also describe the striking _by a man who has been struck_. The Abbé Richard, in his _Histoire de l'Air_, tells the following story:--