68 Professor Oersted on irater-Spoa(-i. 



ill storms. Hence water-spouts must also be accompanied 

 by thunder and lightning. By means of the electricity deve- 

 loped in water-spouts, we may, perhaps, explain the power 

 by which, as has been occasionally observed, water-spouts 

 alternately repel and again attract small cloudy masses. That 

 they should be attracted by a diflFerent portion from that 

 which repelled them, agrees precisely with the natural laws of 

 electricity. 



Although we are certain that the formation of water-spouts 

 is accompanied by electrical action, yet we are not therefore 

 entitled to conclude that electricity is their cause. Distin- 

 guished naturalists have expressed this opinion, but without 

 explaining the manifold peculiarities of watei'-spouts. But 

 still, even more recently, it has been attempted to explain 

 by this cause their rotatory movement, by assuming in them 

 the existence of a strong electrical current, which, by means 

 of the magnetism of the earth, received its circular move- 

 ment. It appears to me, however, that there is much to 

 contradict this opinion. Although we possess the clearest 

 proofs of the electrical nature of water-spouts, yet it seems to 

 me not at all proved by any of the effects noticed, that they 

 contain an actual electrical cmTent. Individuals who have 

 been in contact with water-spouts, never felt an electrical 

 shock, or should a shock actually have been experienced in 

 any instance without our being aware of it, yet there have been 

 many cases in which it was not the case, although the hu- 

 man body can neither enter nor quit an electric current witli- 

 out receiving a shock. A decisive argument, in my opinion, 

 which can be opposed to such a view, is, that a water-spout, 

 whose electricity should be of such a description that the 

 magnetism of the earth could communicate a stronger circu- 

 lar movement, must act very violently on the magnetic needle ; 

 now this has never been noticed in any one of the numerous 

 vessels which have been in the vicinity of water-spouts. Even 

 though it were to happen that on one occasion the needle 

 should be affected by the approach of a water-spout, still this 

 would by no means afford sufficient proof, for such an electric 

 current as that assumed to exist by the theory must always 

 throw the magnetic needle into considerable agitation. Hence 



