194 . ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



for the distance of more than a mile. Those near the spot were burst in, those 

 further off had the nearest windows burst in, the others out ; those further off 

 were all burst out. A piano open near the spot was little injured ; one closed, 

 further off, was burst open and nearly ruined. The effect on the animal 

 system was to produce a sense of suffocation at first, and afterward soreness 

 of the throat, or even hemoptysis. Many were carried some feet and dropped 

 erect. A man on horseback was lifted out of the saddle and dropped into it 

 again. But the most wondrous effect was exhibited by three depressions 

 where the wagons had stood. The one under the middle wagon was ten feet 

 by five, and three feet deep. It appeared that the earth (Macadamized) had 

 not been removed, but condensed. Professor Ohnstead knew of no instance of 

 greater power, even in the great explosion of Brescia, where two millions of 

 pounds of powder exploded, that equaled this. Iron water pipes were broken 

 four or five feet under ground. In the New Haven tornado of 1839, a piece 

 of bureau was carried half a mile and found sticking into a barn, having pene- 

 trated through a thick plank. Feathers have been stripped off of fowls, and a 

 woman washing found herself and her tub, with its water, in the cellar, while 

 some of the clothes she was washing were found beyond West Rock, a distance 

 of two miles. Fowls have been known to be stripped of their feathers in such 

 tornadoes. 



Professor Mahan said that sappers and miners had a rule that the lateral 

 force of an explosion of a mine would destroy the works at three or four times 

 the distance to the surface, and the downward force would do the same to 

 three quarters the distance of the surface. 



Professor Henry saM, that the explanation of the blowing off of the horses' 

 shoes he found in simple inertia. The shoes were not blown away from the 

 dead horse, but the horses were blown off the shoes ; the gravity of the shoe 

 being seven, while the specific gravity of the whole horse is about one. 



Mr. "William C. Redfield saw no satisfactory evidence of a vacuum. Causes 

 are often mistaken, but he had never found any clear evidence of a vacuum, 

 though too much had been attributed to such a cause. 



Professor Brainard thought many phenomena resembled those of electricity, 

 as stripping doors of their hinges and birds of their feathers. 



Professor Loomis thought the indentation in the ground was analogous 

 to the process for submarine explosions, only as the resistance of water is 

 greater than air the force is proportionally greater. As to feathers, the loss of 

 them has been attributed to vacuum, but a fowl suddenly exposed to vacuum 

 loses no feathers. Professor Loomis put a live fowl into a gun of two-inch 

 bore, with a sixth of a charge of powder, and aimed at zenith. It came down 

 denuded of feathers, and mangled by using more powder than was necessary. 



Professor Johnson thought there was an analogy between the indentation 

 of gunpowder here and that often exhibited by more violent fulminates. Two 

 ounces of fulminating mercury will perforate an inch plank when there is 

 nothing to oppose it in any direction. 



Professor Rogers thought that there never could be any condensation of 

 air by explosion without a subsequent rarefaction, and that vacuum played a 

 necessary part of the phenomena of tornadoes. 



