On the Theory of Water-Spouts. 217 
of witnessing these marvellous operations of nature. Several 
papers in your useful Miscellany are so replete with information 
of this class, the occurrences so judiciously observed and go 
minutely detailed, as to render them particularly interesting to 
the student of meteorology. 
My professional avocations have afforded me no opportunity 
of viewing these wonders of the deep; nevertheless, I have had 
the good fortune to see two; the one an ascending, and the 
other a descending water-s spaat. They are twin children of the 
same parent. The two | had the happiness to observe, were 
completely conclusive as to the water rising to the one cloud, 
and falling from the other; upon which I founded a theory to 
satisfy myself, and had preserved drawings of their respective 
appearances: taken at the time, and notes of what I thought ne- 
cessary to keep in remembrance. Independently of these, no- 
thing could be more strongly impressed upon my memory than 
what I am about to detail. 
I was then a very young man, and had only begun to keep a 
eommon-place book, to take drawings of whatever struck my 
fancy, and notes of such occurrences as I conceived worth pre+ 
serving. I had gone pretty early in the morning of the 2d of 
July 1788, to a rising ground at the back of Kirkaldy, opposite 
the “old Fish Ponds of Abbotshall; where some rondales or small 
isles had been formed and planted with large fir trees, which 
produced an admirable and amusing echo. This was from a de- 
sire to ascertain, whether the warm rarified air of a summer 
evening, or the cool dense air of the morning, was most condu- 
ceive to the continued vibration of sound necessary to produce an 
echo. Musing and attentively listening to the responses—the 
sudden overeasting of the sun made me turn round -in expecta> 
tion of immediate rain, when my eye was attracted towards the 
opening of the Firth. Nothing could exceed the awful appear 
ance of the atmosphere, conjoined with the gloom cast upon the 
surface of the sea, by a cloud of uncommon darkness and density 
that spread over the whole opening of the Firth, from Fife Ness 
towards St. Abb’s Head. From the front of the cloud a well- 
defined line, to appearance about the thickness of an ordinary 
cable, descended to the surface of the water. Looking atten- 
tively, it soon assumed the magnitude of a man’s waste, and con- 
tinued to increase as it advanced up the Firth. It was some 
time before I could bring myself to conceive. what this might 
be, when the idea of a water-spout driven by the east wind into 
the Forth from the German Ocean came into my mind. Elated 
with the thoughts of seeing what I had often heard described as 
a tale of wonder, I ran to the shore, in expectation of studying 
we to more advantage, where a great number of people had al- 
ready 
