TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 



33 



These dates indicate approximately the position of the central area, which may 

 have a diameter of 100 miles, while the whole cyclone probably extends more than 

 2000 miles, for the barometer shows that the front often strikes the British Islands 

 about the same time as the rear is leaving Newfoundland. 



Here then was an uninterrupted series of cyclones, which, beginning among the 

 tropical heats of the West Indies, crossed the Atlantic in succession and maintained 

 a continuous discharge of storms and unprecedently heavy rains in Britain, France, 

 Germany, and Italy, from the l/th of September to the end of October. 



On the 30th of September a destructive tempest passed over Sicily and Italy. Seven 

 villages near Messina were destroyed by storms and inundations. At Portici many 

 houses fell and fifteen persons perished. The village of St. Firmin was engul()hed and 

 many lives lost. From the 15th to the 18th of October a tempest raged over the 

 whole Continent. During that period there fell 'ISS m. (6 inches) of rain at Mont- 

 brison, in France. On the I6th, the village of Schledorf, three leagues from Munich, 

 was utterly destroyed by a storm of wind, rain, and lightning. On the 1 8th the 

 great rivers of France overflowed ; the Loire rose 6'94 metres (Ji yards) above its 

 mean height, and a general inundation ensued, the most destructive since that of the 

 13th of November, 1790. 



In the Tyrol> it rained incessantly from the 28th to the 31st of October, and the 

 River Elsch inundated the country. 



On the western coasts of Britain and Ireland, the rear of the last cyclone pro- 

 duced a hurricane from N.W., which occasioned great loss of life and property on 

 the 22nd and 23rd of October. 



1850.— Before considering the inundations of 1856, it will be useful to show that 

 the elevated temperature which invariably accompanies the southern half of a cyclone, 



January 1850. 



232125 26 



may sometimes exert a powerful influence in promoting an inundation by suddenly 

 melting the snows accumulated on the mountains during the winter. On the 26th 

 of January, 1850, a warm rain began to fall at Paris, and melted the snows at the 

 sources of the Seine and its affluents so rapidly as to produce an extraordinary flood. 

 The annexed barometrical curves for the Orkneys, Versailles, and Bordeaux, show 

 the presence at that time of a cyclone of moderate dimensions, the central track 

 passing between the Orkneys and Versailles. The outer southern margin passes 

 1856. 3 



