At Fuzie-en-Fetlar, in Scotland, towards the end of the eighteenth century, lightning broke, in about two seconds at most, a mica-schist rock of one hundred and fifty feet long, by ten broad, and in some parts four feet thick; this it split into great pieces. One, measuring twenty-six feet long by ten broad, and four in thickness, fell on the ground twenty centimetres off. Enormous stones are thrown, at times, in different directions.
In 1762 lightning struck the belfry of Breag Church in Cornwall, broke the stone pinnacle of the edifice, and threw one of the stones, weighing at least a hundred-weight and a half, on the roof of the apsis, in a southerly direction, fifty-five metres away.
In a northerly direction another huge stone was found at 365 metres or so from the belfry; and a third, still larger, to the south-east of the church.
In certain cases the lightning unites a fantastic skill with this excessive brutality. For instance, a wall has been removed intact without being broken in any part. Here is a record of one such extraordinary occurrence:—
On August 6, 1809, at Swinton, near Manchester, during a deluge of rain, the lightning all at once filled a brick building, in which coal was stored, full of pestilential, sulphureous vapour. Above it was a cistern half full. Suddenly the edifice, the walls of which measured thirty centimetres in thickness, were torn out of the ground, the foundations being sixty centimetres deep, and was transported in an upright position to a distance of ten metres.
The weight of this mass, so oddly and so rapidly moved by lightning, was estimated at ten thousand kilograms.
In many cases, on the contrary, the subtle fluid has pulverized a hard stone on the spot and reduced it to powder.
Tiles and slates are very often torn off the roofs: the lightning makes them fly through the air. Sometimes it is content to perforate them with a multitude of little holes.
As for chimneys, they are generally very ill-treated by the meteor. The blows of which they are victims are to be accounted for easily, for they offer perfect powers of conducting to the fulminant matter, firstly, because of their prominence on the summit of the building, especially when they are surmounted by a vane. Again, the flue is often in cast-iron, and if it is bricked it is supported by bars of iron. The surface of the interior is covered with a layer of soot, an excellent conductor, and a stove-pipe often opens into it. Then, too, the hearth and its surroundings are more or less made of metal. Finally, the column of smoke and of hot, damp air rising into the air, shows the lightning the way.
The latter often accepts this invitation, and very frequently gets into a house by the chimney, where everything seems ready for its reception.