The returning stroke of lightning is well known to be due to the restoration of the natural electric state, after it has been disturbed by induction.
A THUNDERSTORM SEEN FROM A BALLOON.
Mr. John West, the American aeronaut, in his observations made during his numerous ascents, describes a storm viewed from above the clouds to have the appearance of ebullition. The bulging upper surface of the cloud resembles a vast sea of boiling and upheaving snow; the noise of the falling rain is like that of a waterfall over a precipice; the thunder above the cloud is not loud, and the flashes of lightning appear like streaks of intensely white fire on a surface of white vapour. He thus describes a side view of a storm which he witnessed June 3, 1852, in his balloon excursion from Portsmouth, Ohio:
Although the sun was shining on me, the rain and small hail were rattling on the balloon. A rainbow, or prismatically-coloured arch or horse-shoe, was reflected against the sun; and as the point of observation changed laterally and perpendicularly, the perspective of this golden grotto changed its hues and forms. Above and behind this arch was going on the most terrific thunder; but no zigzag lightning was perceptible, only bright flashes, like explosions of “Roman candles” in fireworks. Occasionally there was a zigzag explosion in the cloud immediately below, the thunder sounding like a feu-de-joie of a rifle-corps. Then an orange-coloured wave of light seemed to fall from the upper to the lower cloud; this was “still-lightning.” Meanwhile intense electrical action was going on in the balloon, such as expansion, tremulous tension, lifting papers ten feet out of the car below the balloon and then dropping them, &c. The close view of this Ohio storm was truly sublime; its rushing noise almost appalling.
Ascending from the earth with a balloon, in the rear of a storm, and mounted up a thousand feet above it, the balloon will soon override the storm, and may descend in advance of it. Mr. West has experienced this several times.
REMARKABLE AERONAUTIC VOYAGE.
Mr. Sadler, the celebrated aeronaut, ascended on one occasion in a balloon from Dublin, and was wafted across the Irish Channel; when, on his approach to the Welsh coast, the balloon descended nearly to the surface of the sea. By this time the sun was set, and the shades of evening began to close in. He threw out nearly all his ballast, and suddenly sprang upward to a great height; and by so doing brought his horizon to dip below the sun, producing the whole phenomenon of a western sunrise. Subsequently descending in Wales, he of course witnessed a second sunset on the same evening.—Sir John Herschel’s Outlines of Astronomy.