1 42 Supposed Connection of Meteoric Phenomena^ 



On the 14th, also, occurred a very heavy gale in the Baltic, 

 doing great damage to the shipping off the east coast of Swe- 

 den ; and in the night of the 17th, after almost complete 

 darkness from 2 p.m., there fell at Gibraltar, about 10 p.m., 

 a tremendous waterspout, accompanied by thunder, lightning, 

 hail, and a furious wind, doing incalculable damage to the town 

 and garrison, and washing down immense masses of stone 

 and earth from the rock, destroying property and lives. Cold 

 also followed the meteors on the 18th and 19th. On the 

 20th, a heavy gale from e.n.e. cleared the Downs of the ship- 

 ping, snow falling at 5 a.m. of the 21st, but melting as it fell; 

 the wind at n.e. changing to s. with luminous clouds. The gale 

 of the 20th broke up the ice in the Neva, which had accu- 

 mulated in the channel of St. Petersburg. This second chill 

 in England, like that of October, was doubtless the effect of 

 the wind blowing from the n.e. over the snow and ice in Russia, 

 which, as before observed, has been only temporary. These 

 facts and inferences strengthen what had been mentioned 

 before, respecting chilly weather brought by the wind blow- 

 ing from the ice. (VII. 627.) On the 22d, the Vistula was 

 frozen entirely over ; but a thaw ensued, and milder weather ; 

 and eighteen days afterwards the ice had disappeared. Nor 

 does it appear that in Canada, though snow lay on the ground 

 on Nov. 12., that winter had set in there in earnest; for, on 

 the 15th, the weather was fine and open at Quebec. 



On the 28th, here, there was considerable lightning in the 

 s.w. in a cloudless sky, followed, on the 29th, by rain and wind 

 from the w. and s.w., with a rainbow (unusual at this season). 

 The lightning in a clear sky, like the aurora, betokens a 

 change of wind to the quarter where it appears, or contrary 

 to it, as I have invariably noted. 



During the time the wind was at N. and n.e. and e. I 

 occasionally observed that there was a higher current from 

 the s. and s.w.; and particularly on the 23d I noticed the 

 apparent descent of this current, when, about 1 p.m., the wind 

 suddenly shifted, and blew back the clouds previously scud- 

 ding from the north. 



The direction of the winds is not sufficiently studied. Lieut. 

 Burnes, in his Travels to Bokhara (the passages are before 

 alluded to, VIII. 10. note *), distinctly states that the hot 

 tornadoes he experienced at Moultan, in July, 1831, and in 

 Bokhara, in July, 1832, came, after unusual heat, from the 

 n.w., the attractive point of the earthquakes in those coun- 

 tries ; and he says that these tornadoes were not produced 

 by the desert, because, if so, all winds blowing would alike 

 bring them, which is not the case. It is very certain, from 



