Note IV'-32 — Chapter IV · OBSERVATIONS ON NEW SPAIN.[IV'-1]

Wislizenus, Mem., p. 55, quotes this passage, and adds: "By rubbing the hair of cats and dogs in the dark, I could elicit here a greater mass of electricity than I had ever seen produced in this way. Some persons, entitled to confidence, informed me that by changing their woollen under-dress in the night, they had at first been repeatedly frightened by seeing themselves suddenly enveloped in a mass of electrical fire. The remarkable flames that appeared after a thunder-storm in the mountains south of El Paso, already mentioned by me [Mem. p. 43], were no doubt connected with electricity. I recollect also, from an account published in relation to the battle of Buena Vista, that during a sultry evening electrical flames were seen on the points of the bayonets among the sentinels stationed in the mountains."