( 199 ) 

 SCIENTIFIC INTELLIGENCE. 



METEOROLOGY. 



1. On Electrical Sounds in the Alps. — At length we were free of tbe 

 glacier, and recovered a track by no means obvious, which leads to the 

 Chalets of Breuil, leaving upon our left hand the longer and more diffi- 

 cult route by the Cimes Blanches, conducting to St Giacomo d'Ayas. 

 The atmosphere was very turbid, the ground was covered with half 

 melted snow, and some hail began to fall. We were, perhaps, 1500 

 feet below the Col, or still above 9000 above the sea, when I noticed a 

 curious sound, which seemed to proceed from the Alpine pole with 

 which I was walking. I asked the guide next me whether he heard it, 

 and what he thought it was. The members of that fraternity are very 

 hard pushed indeed, when they have not an answer ready for an emer- 

 gency. He therefore replied with great coolness, that the rustling of 

 the stick no doubt proceeded from a worm eating the wood in the in- 

 terior ! This answer did not appear to me satisfactory, and I there- 

 fore applied the eaperimentum cmcis of reversing the stick, so that the 

 point was now uppermost. The worm was already at the other end ! 

 I next held my hand above my head, and my fingers yielded a fizzing 

 sound. There could be but one explanation — we were so near a thun- 

 der cloud, as to be highly electriGed by induction. I soon perceived 

 that all the angular stones were hissing round us like points near a 

 powerful electrical machine. I told my companions of our situation, 

 and begged Damatter to lower his umbrella, which he had now resumed, 

 and hoisted against the hail shower, and whose gay brass point was 

 likely to become the paratonnerre of the party. The words were scarcely 

 out of my mouth, when a clap of thunder, unaccompanied by lightning, 

 justified my precaution. — Prof. Farhes's Travels through the Alps, p. 322. 



2. Melting of a Watch in the Pocket of a Man struck by Lightning^ without his 

 being injured. — During a violent thunder storm, a fishing-boat belonging 

 to Midyell, in the Shetland Islands, was struck by lightning. The electric 

 fluid came down the mast, which it tore into shivers, and melted a watch 

 in the pocket of a man who was sitting close by the side of the mast, 

 without injuring him. Not only was the man altogether unhurt, but 

 his clothes also were uninjured ; and he was not aware of what had 

 tiiken place, until, on taking out his watch, he found it was fused into 

 one mass. — G. W. Spence, Esq. 



GEOLOGy. 



3. Rise of the Sea by sudden rise of a body of Subterranean Water ; and 

 Flowing of Water of the Sea into the Land. — At Samos in Cephalonia, in 

 the summer of 1827, the sea rose about ten feet in perpendicular height, 

 and raised on the shore some large masses of stone, brought there for 



