Sheet Lightning

Abstract

SOME people never see lightning; I have met one lady who cannot, and have heard of other instances. The question suggests itself, consequently, whether the duration of a flash of lightning is sufficient to produce a visible image on the retina or whether the image is only produced after successive reflections in the eye itself, which might be too few to produce such an image in the case of people with very dark eyes; if the latter is the case, this would go far towards accounting for the difficulty there is in deciding as to the character of sheet lightning as far as any optical test is concerned, but would indicate the possibility of further light being thrown on the subject by photography.