It proceeded towards the stables, which were divided into two compartments. In one there were two cows and two oxen: the first cow, to the right of the entrance, was killed, the second was uninjured; the first ox was killed, the second was uninjured.
The same effect was found to have been produced in the other compartment, in which there were four cows; the first and the third were killed, the second and fourth were spared: the odd numbers taken and the even numbers left.
Similar freaks have been recorded in connection with piles of plates struck by lightning—holes being found in alternate plates. How are these things to be explained?
The following story is very extraordinary, though it does not help to clear up the mystery of lightning's strange ways:—
On August 24, 1895, about ten in the morning, in the midst of a storm of wind and rain, several persons saw descending to the ground a whitish-coloured globe of about an inch and a half in diameter, which, on touching the ground, split into two smaller globes. These rose at once to the height of the chimneys on the houses close by and disappeared. One went down a chimney, crossed a room in which were a man and a child, without harming them, and went through the floor, perforating a brick with a clean round hole of about the size of a franc. Under this room there was a sheepfold. The shepherd's son, seated at the doorway, suddenly saw a bright light shining over the flock of sheep, while the lambs were jumping about in alarm. When he went up to them, he was startled to discover that five sheep had been killed. They bore no trace of burning, or of wound of any kind, but about their lips was a sort of foam, slightly pink in colour.
In the adjoining house, the second fireball had also gone down a chimney, and had exploded in the kitchen, causing great damage.
In 1890, a young farmer was working on a plot of ground, two or three miles from Montfort-l'Amaury. A storm breaking out, he stood up against his horses to take refuge from the rain; moving away a few yards in order to get his whip, there was seen, when he returned, a ball of fire almost touching the ear of one of his horses. A moment later it exploded with a deafening noise. The two horses fell—one of them unable to get up again. The farmer himself was dashed to pieces.
On other occasions the meteor is hardly more devastating than the ordinary bomb.
On April 21, at Lanxade, near Bergerac, a storm had been raging already for some hours, when suddenly—simultaneously with a small thunderclap—a ball of fire, of the size of the opening of a sack of corn, fell slowly on one of the banks of the Dordogne, spoiling some fruit trees, and then crossing the river, it raised a waterspout several yards high as it went.
It disappeared finally on the other side of a field of corn.