These are cases of destruction on a large scale, but we can give parallel cases where the terrible fluid seems only to amuse itself. In fact, some people appear to enjoy the privilege of particularly attracting lightning, and of frequently receiving its visits without suffering much from its reiterated attacks. They say that Mithridates was twice touched by lightning. The first stroke was when he was in his cradle, his swaddling clothes were singed, and the scar of a burn which he received on his forehead was covered with hair afterwards. According to the Abbé Richard, a lady, who lived in a château on an elevation near Bourgogne, saw the lightning several times enter her room, divide itself into sparks of different sizes, of which the greater part attached themselves to her clothes without burning them, and left livid traces on her arms and even on her thighs. She said, when speaking on this subject, that thunder had never done her more harm than to whip her two or three times, though it fell pretty often on her château. There seems to be a sort of relative immunity in women and children. These are seldom struck. We have even several examples of children remaining safe and sound in the arms of their mothers who are struck. Fracastor's mother had her child to her breast when she was struck by lightning. The child itself was spared. In August, 1853, at Georgetown (Essex), Mrs. Russel, wife of the Protestant minister, was killed by lightning, while a small child which she had in her arms was unhurt. It would seem as if lightning pitied the feeble--the women and children. We hear of cases where people were struck several times during the same storm without succumbing to its manifold attacks. "In two similar situations," says Arago, "one man, according to the nature of his constitution, runs more risk than another. There are some exceptional people who are not conductors to the fulminating matter, and who neither receive nor pass on a shock. As a rule, they must be ranked among the non-conductor bodies that the lightning respects, or, at least, that it strikes rarely. Such decided differences could not exist without there being finer shades. Thus each degree of conductibility corresponds during the time of a storm to a certain degree of danger. The man who conducts like a metal will be struck as often as a metal, while the man who cuts off the communication in the chain, will have almost as little to fear as if he were made of glass or resin. Between these limits there will be found individuals whom lightning might strike as it would strike wood, stones, etc. Thus, in the phenomena of lightning, everything does not depend on the place that a man may occupy; his physical constitution will have something to do with it." The phantasmagoria of lightning leaves us perplexed. All these observations are extraordinary and very disconcerting. The facts contradict each other, and lead us to no actual conclusion.