SLINGO.
Lately we have all felt, I doubt not, a considerable amount of interest in
the various phenomena attending this summer's unusually heavy
thunderstorms, accompanied, as they have been, by vivid lightning
discharges of a more or less hurtful nature. The list of disasters
published in _Knowledge_, No. 143, might be very materially augmented were
we to record such damage as has been wrought since that list was compiled.
There is not, I suppose, in the mind of any intelligent man at the present
day a doubt as to the electrical origin of a lightning flash. The
questions to be considered are rather whence comes the electricity, and in
what way is the thunderstorm brought about. In attempting to answer these
questions, sight must not be lost of the fact that the very nature of
electricity is in itself almost sufficient to baffle any effort put forth
to ascertain from lightning, as such, its whence and its whither.
It is possible, however, with the aid of our knowledge of static
electricity, to arrive at hypotheses of a more than chimerical nature. In
the first place, that our sphere is a more or less electrified body is
generally admitted. More than this, it is demonstrated that the different
parts of the earth's surface and its enveloping atmosphere are variously
charged.
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