The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-01-07
HEAT LIGHTNING.
The Inapplicability of the Distant Storm Theory

The Inapplicability of the Distant Storm
 Theory.
 The so-called heat lightning, or Summer lightning has long been a matter of controversy. The phenome- | non in question is the appearance of 1 lightning without thunder on pleasant summer evenings, which was formerly asserted by almost all authorities to be the reflection of lightning due to some very distant storm, but is now uite gen. lerally regarded as analogous to the brush or glow dischrge of an electrical machine. The probability seems to be that these explanations will both hold in l different cases. Professor Geikie, the noted geologist, describes an Alpine 1 lightning display which he thinks shows conciusively that the distant storm the 1 ory is inapplicable. He says:
 l "Late in the afternoon wisos of white mist began to gather round the summit 1 of the Jungfrau, and streaks of this cloud took shape in the higher air above 1 the great mountain ridge that extends 1 from the Silberhorn to the Breithorn. About 8 D. m. I noticed faint, quivering flight overhead, supplemented by occa- sional flashes of greater brilliance and dierent color. These manifestations lrapidly increased in distinctness, and continued to play only along the oppo- site mountain ridge, not extending into the regions beyond, so far as these could be seen from here, though I have since learned that an independent series of flashes was seen around the Schit- thorn on this side of the valley. Not a l sigle peal of thunder was at any time
 audible. A long bank of cloud formed at a higher level than the sunmits of 1 the mountain ridge, and at some dis l tance on the farther side of it, so that the stars, elsewhere brilliant. were hid den along the stri of sky above the crest.
 As one watched the display, it was easy to distinguish more definitely the two kinds of discharge. One of them took the form of faintly luminous red Idish or pink light, which shot with a Tremendous strean1er-like moton in hori-
 zontal beams that proceeded apparently from left to right, as if their starting
 point lay somewhere about the back of lthe Jungfrau. These streamers SO close Fly resembled the aurora borealis that
 had they appeared alone, one would have been inclined to wonder whether 1 the northern lights had not here made
 an incursion into more southern lati- tudes.
 * x
 'The brighter discharges were not
 only far more brilliant, but much more momentary. They had pale, bluish-
 white color, and came and went with
 the rapidity of ordinary lightning. But they were clearly connected with the
 mountains, and not reflections from a sense of distant flashes Sometimes they arose on the other side of the great ridge, allowing It's jagged crest to be seen against the illuminated surface of 1 the cloud beyond but leaving all the preoipices and slopes on this side in the stade. In other cases they clearly showed themselves on this side of the mountains, lighting up especially the snow-basins and glaciers with the dark crags around them. Nothing of the na- ture of forked lightning was observed
 among them. In one instance the flash