Certain effects, however, can only be explained by an ascending movement of the fluid. The following cases for example:—
"During the summer of 1787, two men were sheltering under a tree at Tancon, Beaujolais, when they were struck by lightning. One of them was killed on the spot, the other felt no ill effects other than momentary suffocation. Their horses were caught up to the top of the tree. An iron ring which bound the wooden shoe belonging to one of the men, was found hanging from a high branch of the same tree. Now, at a little distance, there was a tree which had also suffered greatly by the passage of the electric fluid. In the soil at its base a round hole was to be seen, shaped like a funnel. Directly above it the bark had been loosened and slit into slender thongs. As for the tree beneath which the men had sheltered, it also had half its bark off, and long splinters were to be seen hanging only by the upper parts. On one side of the tree the leaves were withered, on the other they were still quite green."
In this most remarkable instance the lightning had come out of the ground.
In the cleft of a willow tree blasted by lightning its roots were found.
Besides, the soil is often undulating, and thrown up around trees which have been struck.
Vegetables do not always succumb, any more than men, to these attacks. They may be lightly struck in a vital part, in which case they recover from their wounds. Very often they are merely stripped of their natural garments, in other words, of their bark and foliage. This is one of those superficial injuries to which they are most subject.
The following is an example of this kind of fulguration:—
On July 16, 1708, two oaks were struck at Brampton. The larger measured about ten feet around the base. They were both split asunder, and the bark peeled off from the summit to the soil, a length of twenty-eight feet. Completely detached from the trunk, it hung in long strips from the top.
Boussingault witnessed the destruction by lightning of a wild pear tree at Lamperlasch, near Beekelleronn. At the moment of the explosion an enormous column of vapour arose, like smoke coming out of a chimney when fresh coal has been put on the fire. The lightning flashed in all directions, great branches gave way, and when the vapour cleared off, there stood the pear tree, its trunk a dazzling white: the lightning had taken the bark completely off. Sometimes the bark is only partially stripped off one side, or left on, in more or less regular bands, either on the trunk or on the branches.
During a violent storm at Juvisy, on May 18, 1897, an elm five hundred metres distant from the Observatory was struck by lightning, which took the bark off lengthwise in a strip, four centimetres wide and five centimetres deep. This band of bark was cut clean off. There was no trace of burning.