A correspondent of Poey, the astronomer, told him that he had known a Trinidad lady who had been struck by lightning in her youth and on whose stomach the lightning had imprinted a metallic comb which she carried in her apron.
In these instances there was some kind of contact of the objects with the persons struck. Here are others in which the objects reproduced are further removed, but still of metallic substance and still reminding us therefore of electro-metallurgy.
In September, 1825, the brigantine Le Buon-Servo, at anchor in the Bay of Armiro, was struck by lightning. A sailor seated at the foot of the mizzen-mast was killed. On his back was found a light yellow and black mark, beginning at his neck and going down to his loins, where there was discovered an exact reproduction, in facsimile, of a horseshoe nailed to the mast.
The mizzen-mast of another brigantine was struck by lightning in the roadstead of Zaube. Under the left breast of a sailor who was killed was found imprinted the number 44, which his mates all declared was not there before. These two figures, large and well formed, with a full stop between them, were identical with the same numbers in metal affixed to the rigging of the ship, and placed between the mast and the sailor's bunk, in which he was lying asleep when struck.
May it not have been a tattoo-mark in spite of what his companions declared?
M. José Maria Dau, of Havana, records that in 1838, in the province of Candaleria, in Cuba, there was found on the right ear and on the right side of the neck of a young man struck by lightning, the reproduction of a horseshoe, which had been nailed up at a short distance from him against a window.
These various records lead us to the reflection: first, that ceraunography should form a new branch of physics, well meriting study; secondly, that the facts set forth are sufficiently inverse in their nature to show us that we have before us several quite distinct specimens of phenomena.
However, these matters have been a subject for study long before our day.
A priest, P. Lamy, of the Congregation of Saint Maur, published in 1696 an excellent little work,[2] informed by the most lucid common sense upon the curious effects of lightning—then a text for the most superstitious commentaries. Voltaire could not have reasoned the thing out better. He deals with two very extraordinary cases among others.
The first had for scene the Abbey of Saint Médard, at Soissons, on April 26, 1676. A flash of lightning struck the tower of the abbey, went into the clock, penetrated a wall eight feet thick, by a hole conducting an iron rod à l'aiguille de cadran, detached two planks, four feet high, and threw them to the extreme end of the dormitory, followed a brass wire stretched along the whole length of the wall, setting fire to it and spreading it out like a ribbon painted to represent a furrow of flames. Here is the author's own description:—