6 Sujjposed Connection of Meteoric Phenomena, 



and dying. China was, before that date, affected in the same 

 way. 



In consequence of the heat in France, and on the Rhine, 

 the vintage was better than in any year since 1811. 



From India, accounts, later than the above, furnish the 

 most horrid details of women eating, and burning, and selling 

 their children; and, from Sept. 1833 to May 1834, these 

 revolting occurrences took place, as the famine consequent 

 on the long drought arrived : witness Ellore, Ahmedabad, 

 Bundelcund, and Cashmere. ( Asiatic Journ., Aug. and Dec. 

 1834.) 



In Sept. 1833, the wells in the Isle of Wight were all dry. 

 One man is said to have realised a considerable sum of money 

 by selling water, brought from a distance. 



In Gloucestershire, Lincolnshire, &c, the same inconve- 

 nience arose ; and it is stated on good authority that, notwith- 

 standing late rains and inundations, many of the springs in the 

 centre of the kingdom remained closed so late as January of 

 the present year ; and some of them have continued so till 

 the present date. The rivers have been lower than were ever 

 known; and springs have failed, in 1833 and 1834, never 

 remembered to have failed before.* In Demerara, the heat 

 was so great in Sept. 1833, that the woods took fire, and sea 

 water was obliged to be let into the fields. In Dominica, 

 St. Lucia, Antigua, &c, the coffee was so burnt up as to be 

 without leaves. Bahia and Rio Janeiro were affected in 

 October, as well as the Crimea. Egypt and Abyssinia were 

 also included in this catalogue ; for the Nile, on which the 

 fertility of Egypt depends, did not rise at all in 1833. f In 

 December, the Baltic was so open, that only nine English 

 ships wintered at Cronstadt. The mildness of the last winter 

 was proverbial : on Jan. 15. 1834, the thermometer, in Paris, 



* In February, March, and April, 1833, as much rain fell, within half an 

 inch, as in the next six months : the evaporation in the second period was 

 four times that of the former. (Mr. Bassett, in Bury and Norwich Post.) 

 The month of October, 1834, has been the driest for many years : scarcely 

 five days' rain. Dust flew as in summer ; and mills have stopped for want 

 of water. The springs, up to the date of this paper, are still lower than 

 almost ever known : complaints, at Winchelsea, aj"e made that the wells 

 are dry. In Dorsetshire it is the same : the water in a pond, in my or- 

 chard, which is filled by infiltration, stands lower by 2 ft. than it did in 

 1833, previously to the rains of the spring. 



■f- The inundation of the Nile is caused by rains in Abyssinia from 

 April to September ; and the usual period of the river's rising is about the 

 18th of June : we may, therefore, conclude that there was little or no rain, 

 and, consequently, unusual drought, in Abyssinia for the six hot months of 

 1833. 



