An Account of a -oery remarkable WATER SPOUT, which ap'- 

 peared at Ramsgate, July l6, 1810, a little before 3 o'clock in 

 the afternoon, just after a Thunder Storm; by the REV. S. 

 VINCE, A.M.F. R. S. Plumian Professor of Astronomy and 

 Experimental Philosophy at Cambridge. 



IN the annexed figure, L M N" represents a cloud, in which 

 there first appeared a figure in the form jP G, resembling an 

 huge serpent; this immediately stretched itself out in an hori- 

 zontal direction AM B; at J5 it turned at right angles down- 

 ward in the direction J5 C to the sea D E, the sea immedi- 

 ately under it rising up in a cylindrical form v w x y io meet 

 it. The horizontal part, (which was straight), I judged to be 

 about 3 or 400 yards long, and the perpendicular part B C 

 in the proportion now represented, the greatest diameter of 

 which I estimated to be about o or 6 feet. It was attended 

 with an hissing noise, and continued about 5 minutes, when 

 it almost instantaneously disappeared, every part of it at the 

 same time dissolving as it were into air, the water in the sea 

 then ceasing to rise up. Water Spouts are an electrical phe- 

 nomenon, lightning being sometimes seen to play in them» 

 Perhaps this, which appears to be of a very singular form (for 

 I have never seen such a one described), maj be thus account- 

 ed for. If the cloud L M N, and the air at B were charged 



