Scientific Intelligence— Meteorology. 181 
immense excavations are made in the mineral-fields around 
Airdrie ; and that, ere long, minerals for these furnaces must 
be brought from a distance. There is, therefore, a necessity 
of husbanding with the greatest economy our mineral-fields, 
and to leave no pillars below ground, so far as this system can 
be pursued with safety, as regards the workmen and mineral- 
fields; for in working with pillars, from a fourth to a third 
of the whole area of coal is left behind and lost, and if theres 
is ironstone in the roof of the coal, what is immediately 
above the pillars is lost also. 
SCIENTIFIC INTELLIGENCE. 
METEOROLOGY. 
1. Destructive Effects of a Water-Spout on the Bredon Hill, 
North Gloucestershire, on Thursday, 8d May 1849.—About half- 
past five in the afternoon of Thursday, the 3d of May 1849, during 
a storm of thunder, lightning, and hail, an enormous body of water 
was seen to rush down a gully in the Bredon Hill, and direct. its 
course to the village of Kemerton. The stream was broad and im- 
petuous, carrying everything before it. Its extraordinary force and 
body of water may be judged of from the fact, that, on reaching the 
residence of the Rev. W. H. Bellairs, of Kemerton, it broke down a 
stone wall which surrounded the garden, burst through the founda- 
tion of another, made a way for itself through the dwelling-house, and 
then carried off a third wall of brick, six feet high. The garden 
soil was washed away, and ‘enormous blocks of stone,”’ and debris 
from the hill left in its place. By this time the current was con- 
siderably broken ; nevertheless, it flowed through the house, to the 
depth of nearly three feet, for the space of an hour and forty minutes. 
The neighbouring railway was so deeply flooded as to delay the ex- 
press train, by extinguishing the fire of the engine. 
Upon the Saturday morning, as soon as possible after the occur- 
rence of this remarkable phenomenon, Mr Bellairs rode up the Bredon 
Hill to ascertain its cause. For more than a mile the course of the 
torrent could be easily traced, from twenty to thirty feet in breadth, 
every wall being broken down, and the whole, or greater part, of the 
soil removed. On arriving at the north-west shoulder of the hill, the 
