106 On the Identity of JVuler-spouti and Whirlwinds. 



carried up a column of sand a great way into the atmosphere ; 

 and if it had passed from the land to the surface of the sea, it 

 no doubt would have carried the water upward in the gaseous 

 form, and probably a cloud would have appeared over it. 



Whirlwinds of a minor kind may be perceived almost daily; but 

 these are only eddies of wind produced from obstructions of hills, 

 cliffs, buildings, &c. to its regular course, and similar to whirl- 

 pools or eddies, in a river or strait, occasioned by the prominent 

 parts of the land. 



Another kind of whirlwind like those last mentioned, is some- 

 times experienced to blow from valleys or over high cliffs, down 

 upon the sea. Although this, as he remarks, may not happen 

 in Gibraltar Bay, or in Table Bay at the Cape of Good Hope, 

 yet in sailing close to high cliffs among the Eastern Islands, I 

 have several times seen whirling guBts of wind descend and re- 

 bound from the surface of the sea, carrying the water in their 

 vortex several fathoms upward in the form of sprav. 



Previous to concluding these remarks, it may not be irrelevant 

 to advert to the opinions of some of those who have written in 

 early times on meteorology. Pliny, in his Natural History, de- 

 scribing a sudden blast of wind or typhon, savs, '' there riseth 

 also upon the sea a dark mist resembling a monstrous beast, and 

 this is ever a terrible cloud to sailors. Another likewise called 

 •cnltimn ox pillar, when the vapour and v/ater engendered is so 

 thick and stiff congealed, that it standeth compact of itself. Of 

 the same sort, also, is that cloud which draweth water to it, as 

 it were into a long pipe.' 



Aristotle, in his third book on meteors, describes some of the 

 causes of whirlwinds or tv})hon, and mentions that there are both 

 descending and ascending whirlwinds. Olympiodorus, his com- 

 mentator, in reference to Aristotle's definition of these words, 

 «ays, ' and thus through continued vibrations, a spiral and in- 

 volution of the wind is formed, proceeding from the earth as to 

 a cloud, and elevating any body vvith which it may happen to 

 meet — on the sea indeed ships, but on the earth animals or 

 stones, or anything else which the half blow again suffers to tend 

 downward. This involution Homer calls thuella, but Aristotle 

 iyphon, in consequence of vehemently striking against as it were, 

 and breaking solid bodies. Sailors, however, call it syphon, be- 

 cause like a syphon it draws upward the water of the sea.' 



If, however, it is produceil from a cloud, it originates as fol- 

 lows: the cloud being on all sides condensed and inwardly com- 

 pressed, fuliginous exhalation becoming inwardly multiplied and 

 evolved in a nudtiform manner, the cloud, from the violence is 

 suddenly burst, and the inwardly evolved fuliginous exhalation, 

 proceeds out of it, preserving the same form which it had with- 

 in 



