1 12 Whirlivinds. 



diameter of the column was least. Their progressive velo- 

 city was probably between 10 and 1 5 miles per hour. Large 

 hailstones fell at the time of their passing, and destroyed the 

 glass in a great many windows, the hailstones in and near 

 the town of St Just being nearly as lai'ge as marbles. The 

 fourth, or westernmost whirlwind, appears to have swept 

 over a small portion of the land close to Cape Cornwall. 



The counting-house of Wheal Spearn was so fearfully 

 shaken by one of the whiidwinds, that those within expected 

 it would have fallen. Richard Pearce, Esq. of Penzance, who 

 was then near it, beheld, only a minute or two previously, a 

 most magnificent electrical phenomenon. At the distance of 

 about a mile SW. of the mine, in the direction of Ciipe 

 Cornwall, there suddenly rose from the sea, or the land near 

 to it, to a vast height, a pillar of fire, exceedingly vivid, and 

 apparently of the thickness of a man's arm. On reaching its 

 highest elevation, it spread itself from the top in all direc- 

 tions, with splendid coruscations, followed by a terrific peal 

 of thunder. This form of the luminous appearance renders it 

 probable that the electric fluid passed at that moment from 

 the earth into the clouds, along the axis * of the fourth or 

 most westei'n whirlwind, which must at the time have been 

 near the Cape. The shock in the immediate neighbourhood 

 of that headland was tremendous. Two men, at a consider- 

 able distance from each other, were struck to the earth, one 

 of them in a barn, the other on the open common. Nor was 

 it confined to the surface. Underground, in Bosweddan mine, 

 near the Cape, the miners felt it severely at the depth of 44 

 fathoms, the sensation being like that produced by an artifi- 

 cial electric shock ; and the thunder of unparalleled loudness, 

 heard by those above ground, seemed to the terrified miners 

 beneath, as the sound of the falling in of the sides of a shaft. 

 It is worthy of remark, that the noise thus heard under- 

 ground was precisely similar to that which is heard by miners 

 beneath the surface dui*ing shocks of earthquakes, r 



'■* An analogous phenomenon is described in Rees' OyclopaHlia. under the 

 word " Spout." 



t Trans, of Royal Geol. Soc. of Cornvyall, vol. v., p. 459*. 



