The destructive work of lightning in every form is immense. A formidable and invisible world skirts the earth--an enchanted world, more wonderful than any Eastern legend--an unknown ocean, whose immaterial presence is constantly brought before us by the most fearful electric conflagrations. Even to-day the brilliancy of lightning hides itself from us in the darkness of impenetrable mystery. But we feel that there is an immeasurable power, an unimaginable force which rules us. We are, in fact, but puny beings in comparison with this magic force, and the ancients were wise when they made the King of the Gods responsible for the actions of lightning. He alone in His splendour and sovereignty could exercise such an empire over our modest planet--above all, over man's imagination. Science slowly follows the centuries in their ascending march towards progress. At present our knowledge of ball lightning is limited, and we have only the principal facts of nature to contribute to the elucidation of the problem. In increasing our observations, and in comparing those which are analogous, we may hope, if not to arrive at an immediate conclusion, at least to help in the work of discovering what laws govern this subtle and imponderable fluid. Here it will strike a man dead without leaving a trace; there it will only attack the clothes and insinuate itself as far as the skin without even grazing it. It will burn the lining of a garment, and leave the material of which it is made intact. Sometimes it profits by the bewilderment caused by its dazzling light to entirely undress a person, and leave him naked and inanimate, but with no external wound, not even a scratch. We find as many peculiarities as facts. Some of the actions of lightning remind one of the fantastic stories of Hoffmann and Edgar Poe, but nature is more wonderful than the imagination of man, and lightning remains supreme in its phantasmagoria. Thunder seems to play with the ignorance of man; its crimes and jests would have been ascribed to the devil in olden days. We submit to the effects without being able to determine the cause which directs them. It would seem as if lightning were a subtle being--a medium between the unconscious force which lives in plants and the conscious force in animals. It is like an elemental spirit, keen, capricious, malicious or stupid, far-seeing or blind, wilful or indifferent, passing from one extreme to another, and of a unique and terrifying character. We see it twisting into space, moving with astonishing dexterity among men, appearing and disappearing with the rapidity ... of lightning ... it is impossible to define its nature. At all events, it is a great mistake to trifle with it. It means running great risks. It resents being interfered with, and those who try to probe into its domain are generally rather cruelly put in their place. It was an indiscretion of this kind which cost Dr. Richmann his life.