The Vulnerable Oak
A note, that entirely supports the experience of recent storms in England that the oak has an electric affmity, appears in a charming life of Warde Fowler, just published. The passage is this : " Why did the lightning treat different kinds of trees in different ways ? Why among the damaged trees was there not a single beech ? Why were the elms let off with the loss of a ribbon of bark, while the oaks were peeled, and, in two cases at least, fatally peeled ? The undoubtedly stronger attraction that the oak possesses for lightning (for proof of which he discovered adequate data from modern forestry) suggested to him the theory—now accepted by scholars—of the connexion in ancient Greece and Italy between the oak tree and the god of lightning."
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