1825.] 
and larger stars; ascending, and moving 
laterally, with all degrees of inclination; 
clearly shewing that the term falling is 
improperly applied, except, perhaps, to the 
sparks, or luminous superficial fragments, 
‘of the larger classes of meteors, which are 
‘making their way obliquely down to the 
earth, in the form of meteoric stones. 
The Equatorial Length of Pendulums was, 
in the year 1823, the object of an elaborate 
course of experiments, by Captain Crisp, in 
latitude 0° 1’ 48”°78, on Gumsha-Lout, a 
small islet on the coast of Bencoolen 
Island. The reduction of Captain Crisp’s 
observations, filling 268 folio pages of 
manuscript, gives 39°02126 inches, for the 
length of a simple pendulum, vibrating 
seconds of mean time, at the level of the sea. 
Barometric Calculations of Heights, by 
the mean annual columns of mercury, and 
mean degrees of temperature in different 
places, can be noways depended on; as 
Dr. W. Burney has shewn in the Phil. 
Mag. No. 323, with regard to his own 
observations made at Gosport, fifty feet 
above low-water; Mr. Cary’s observations, 
in the Strand, London, at seventy-three 
feet (Phil. Mag. vol. xlvii. p. 469) above 
low water; and Mr. Veal’s observations at 
Boston, probably not more than twenty or 
thirty feet above low water :—yet calcula- 
tions as above, with his own mercurial 
column, would, the Doctor says, shew Mr. 
Cary’s observatory to be only thirty feet 
above, and Mr. Veal’s as much as 200 feet 
above low water! 
A Survey of the Persian Gulf, under the 
direction of Captain Maude, is in progress, 
on which two vessels, the Discovery and 
the Psyche, are employed. Already, about 
1,000 miles of a very indented coast have 
been surveyed, from Ras-Moosendem, at 
the entrance of the Gulf, to the island of 
Bahrein. -The greater part of the rocks 
here are described as basaltic, and thence 
are inferred to be of voleanic origin. In 
the high and rugged cape, which the 
ancients denominated the Black Moun- 
tains, there are two deep and completely- 
sheltered large estuaries, which have been 
named Elphinston’s Inlet and Colville’s 
Cove. Several of the smaller valleys on 
this coast are in a high state of cultivation, 
by a mixed race of Bedouins and Muscat 
Arabs. —The survey is expected to be ex- 
tended to the mouth of the Euphrates, 
during the present year. 
Earthquakes in Sicily, in March 1823, 
were observed, in the vicinity of Palermo, 
by M. Ferrara, with a degree of self-posses- 
sion, and collected attention to the direc-’ 
tion and quantity of motion occasioning the 
shocks, and to their effects in fissuring and 
concussing the ground and buildings, whieh’ 
has rarely been equalled; and his account’ 
thereof, inserted in the Boston Journal of 
Philosophy (see, also, the Phil, Mag. Nos. 
Spirit of Philosophical Discovery. 535 
322 and 323), instead of being almost con- 
‘fined, as has been usual, to horrible rela- 
tions of human affright and suffering, and 
the sudden destruction of life and property, 
dwells chiefly on those particulars of the 
_event, and its effects, which are calculated 
to throw light on the causes of these awful 
phenomena. His remarks, also, on the ill 
adaptation of the houses and buildings, in 
Palermo and other places, to the shocks 
they are destined, at frequent intervals, to 
endure, and proposals for lower and more 
substantial buildings, are excellent. The 
steam, generated by sudden accessions of 
water, to the strata which are on fire, is 
satisfactorily shewn to be the cause of 
earthquakes, and of the propulsion of 
melted minerals, in the form of lava, from 
the craters of voleanoes. These last, par- 
ticularly as regards tna, M. Ferrara has 
shewn to be considerably distant from the 
incandescent strata, and interiors of fire- 
caverns, in which the lava is formed :— 
caverns which, nevertheless, are extremely 
limited in extent, and local in distribution, 
compared with those central molten cal- 
drons of which the Plutonic geologists 
dream. Under the Eolian Sea, not ex- 
ceedingly deep, nor very distant from the 
often-burning craters of Voleano and 
Stromboli mountains, the lava, fire and 
steam, seem to have been formed, and the 
last suddenly generated, which so greatly 
shook the vicinity of Palermo in March 
1823; the fiery caverns of the Sciacca 
mountain, near to that city, probably 
lying much nearer to the surface, and being 
of small extent, as compared with the 
aboye, or with the caverns in which are 
prepared the lava which feeds Etna, and 
the steam which shakes its vicinity, around 
Nicosia as a centre—as appeared to be the 
case in the convulsions of tna in the 
summer of 1822. 
The Depths of Rain, locally, in England, 
decrease, accordingly as the south-west 
wind passes over a greater breadth of land, 
to arrive at any given place: as is inferred 
by Dr. W. Burney, whose rain-gauge, kept 
for many years at Gosport, shews a mean 
annual depth of 34°5 inches. This, at Lon- 
don, is reduced to a mean fall of 25:2 inches 
of rain, and at Boston, to 24 inches. The 
SW. wind passing up the Irish Sea almost 
to Kendal, seems to occasion there a mean 
fall of 60 inches; but, in passing across 
Wales and great part of England to reach 
New Malton, so much of the clouds’ water 
had already precipitated, as to occasion 
there a mean fall of only 40 inches of rain. 
The Spray of the Sea is driven far inland, 
by some storms of wind—as appears from 
the experiments of Mr. Dalton, communi- 
cated to the Manchester Society; who, in 
rain-water caught at that town, during a 
storm of wind coming about thirty miles 
across the land from near Liverpool, found 
about one part in 200 to be sea-water, 
A mixed 
_ 
