Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/263

Rh Saw a very large white-ash tree, three and a half feet in diameter, which was struck by lightning the 22d. The lightning apparently struck the top of the tree and scorched the bark and leaves for ten or fifteen feet downward, then began to strip off the bark and enter the wood, making a ragged, narrow furrow or crack, till reaching one of the upper limbs it apparently divided, descending on both sides and entering deeper and deeper into the wood. At the first general branching it had got full possession of the tree in its centre, and tossed off the main limbs, butt foremost, making holes in the ground where they struck, and so it went down in the midst of the trunk to the earth, where it apparently exploded, rending the trunk into six segments, whose tops, ten or twenty feet long, were rayed out on every side at an angle of about 30° from a perpendicular, leaving the ground bare directly under where the tree had stood, though they were still fastened to the earth by their roots. The lightning appeared to have gone off through the roots, furrowing them as it had furrowed the branches, and through the earth, making a furrow like a plow, four or five rods in one direction, and in another passing through the cellar of the neighboring house, about thirty feet distant, scorching the tin milk-pans, and throwing dirt into the milk,