Generally the people who are struck fall at once without a struggle. It has been proved by a great number of observations that the man who has been struck by lightning so as to lose consciousness immediately falls without having seen, heard, or felt anything. This is easy to believe, since electricity is animated by a movement much quicker than that of light, and still more so than that of sound. The eye and ear are paralyzed before the lightning and the thunder could have made an impression on them; so much so that the victims, when they recover themselves, are unable to explain what has happened to them. People struck by lightning nearly always sink on the very spot where they have been struck. Besides this, we have already remarked several cases where the people struck have preserved the exact positions they had at the moment of the catastrophe. But, on the other hand, we can quote some examples, rarer, but diametrically opposed to these. On July 8, 1839, lightning struck an oak near Triel (Seine-et-Oise), and also struck two quarrymen, father and son. This last was killed dead, raised, and transported twenty-three yards away. The surgeon Brillouet was surprised by a storm near Chantilly, and was raised by the lightning and deposited twenty-five paces from where he had been. On August 18, 1884, at Namur (Belgium), a man was flung ten yards from the tree under which he had been struck by lightning. The following notice was in the papers in August, 1900:-- "Brousses-et-Villaret (Aude), August 20. During the storm which burst over that region the lightning killed two cows belonging to M. Bouchère. It also struck, but without hurting him, a young man of twenty-three years of age, Bernard Robart, artilleryman, who was taking a holiday. He was walking to a neighbouring farm when he was suddenly carried through the air for fifty yards. He got up again without any hurt, only he was dazzled by the lightning which had flashed before his eyes." On writing to the victim to verify this fact, I received the following answer:-- "I have the honour to inform you that the article relating to the incident which happened to me during the lightning, on the 17th, is absolutely true.