Vermont Phœnix

A November Thunder Storm.—We heard but two claps of thunder on the 6th of November; and at one of these the pine tree was struck near Mr. Luther Weld's which was mentioned in the last Phoenix. The tree was some seventy or eighty feet in height and about two feet in diameter; and it stood among a clump of other similar trees on the right bank of, and some fifty yards from, West River. Northward from the tree, and at the distance of a quarter of a mile, rose a steep hill covered with pines. The tree was, in fact, in a deep valley, the country rising away above it on either side, and presenting more elevated objects than itself to the anger of the clouds.

The clouds came from the south-west, although they cleared up soon after the thunder claps occurred from the north-west.

The top of the tree, twenty to thirty feet in length, was broken square off by the shock, and the trunk below was torn into hundreds of fragments, as if it had been burst asunder from an internal explosion. These fragments varied in size from small splinters up to pieces ten, twenty and thirty feet in length: and they generally lay pointing outwards and strewing the ground in every direction, covering a circular space whose diameter was from fifty to sixty yards. The top of the tree when severed from the trunk, fell vertically downwards and remained in an upright position leaning against the splintered stump. Its leaves seemed to stare upwards, though this appearance might not be unnatural. The fragments of the trunk retained their bark, and some of the large ones their branches.

The lightning, on reaching the ground, followed off two roots in opposite directions, one leading to the east and the other to the west, shattering them into threads and throwing up the earth in small channels above them.

Two other large, tall pine trees in a south-west direction from the tree struck, one about eight and the other sixteen paces from it, appeared to have been struck at the same time. The fluid entered the bark of the nearer one at a point about fifty feet above the ground, descended along the trunk three or four feet, then passed to a small hemlock close by it, and ran down its exterior to the ground, leaving traces of its progress upon the bark. The farther tree was struck at a point about forty feet above the ground, at a large dry limb, and the fluid laid open a groove in the bark, following the half spiral twist of the grain of the tree to the ground. This groove was some two or three inches wide in the outer bark, and three quarters of an inch wide in the inner bark. A small line or stripe of this inner bark ran through the middle of the smaller groove all the way as far as the eye could trace, the trunk on both sides of it being laid perfectly bare. No other trees in the neighborhood appeared to have been seared or marked, except by the flying fragments of the tree struck, although there were several pretty tall ones—maple, chestnut and beech—standing close by. A grander, or more sudden, violent and impressive display of power, it has never been our fortune to witness.

A man—a democrat—who was coming to the village to vote, and who saw the tree soon after it was thus shivered, declared with much emphasis and enthusiasm that it was a sure omen of Lincoln's election. "Well," said he, "it is all up with us now! Old Abe will get it; for he is round here splitting rails!" Sure it is that timber is not split in this way at every presidential election of the United States.