200 Lieut.- Col. Sabine on the Winter Storms 



ever inclines me to believe that the true Occidental Bezoar con- 

 sisted of diphosphate of lime, and that these concretions, which 

 Kaempfer states were termed in Persia Lapis Bezoar Occiden- 

 talis, on account of their similarity to the concretions brought 

 from South America, were so called from their exterior pos- 

 sessing the same smooth polished exterior as the diphosphate 

 of lime concretions. The concretions described by Kaempfer 

 under the name of Coagulum JZesinosum Bezoarticum, are evi- 

 dently identical with resino-bezoardic acid calculi ; for he says 

 that the Swedish ambassador, on his departure from Ispahan, 

 purchased some specimens, which, when thrown upon burning 

 coals, melted and gave out an aromatic odour like that of co- 

 lophony or olibanum. In the work of Clusius there is a 

 figure of the occidental bezoar which is quite characteristic of 

 this calculus, and Monardes asserts that they were taken from 

 the wild goats of Persia. It is not however probable that any 

 particular species of concretion was confined exclusively to 

 the animals of one or the other hemisphere, since the resinous 

 and bitter juices from which the concretions are formed exist 

 in the plants of both divisions of the globe. 

 [To be continued.] 



XXXVI. On the Winter Storms of the United States. 

 By Lieut.-Colonel Sabine. 



To the Editors of the Philosophical Magazine and Journal. 



Gentlemen, 



"VTOUR meteorological readers, and especially those who 

 -*- take an interest in the law of storms, will, I am sure, be 

 glad to have their attention drawn to a second memoir by 

 Professor Loomis of New York, on the phaenomena of the 

 great storms which are experienced in the United States du- 

 ring the winter months. In this memoir (Art. IV. of vol. ix. 

 of the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society) 

 two storms are investigated, one of which occurred about the 

 3rd of February, 1842, and the other about the 15th of the 

 same month of the same year. The method of investigation is 

 the same which Professor Loomis adopted in his account of the 

 great storm of December 20th, 1836, viz. the assemblage in 

 one view of the atmospherical circumstances simultaneously 

 observed over the whole extent of the United States, both 

 during the continuance of the storm and for one or two pre- 

 ceding days. It is by this path that we may confidently hope 

 to attain to a knowledge of the causes which produce these 

 great atmospherical derangements j and, thanks to the spirit 



