74 Notices of Tornadoes, §c. 
fruit trees or poultry : nor were human beings secure from being 
carried aloft, and more or less injured by subsequent descent. It 
was alledged that at Somerset two women were carried from a 
wagon over a wall, into an adjoining field. Within the same 
village a cellar door frame, with its doors bolted, was lifted, and 
then deposited on one éide of its previous position ; although sit- 
uated to windward of the mansion to which it belonged. This 
result was the more striking, because, in consequence of their pre- 
senting an inclined plane to the blast, the doors and their frames 
would have been pressed more firmly upon their foundation by 
an ordinary wind. In consequence of the same dilatation of the 
air within the house, which lifted the cellar door, the weather- 
boarding on the leeward side was burst open, while that to the 
windward was undisturbed. ; 
About four o’clock on the afternoon during which this tornado _ 
passed near Providence, there was heard at the farm at which I 
resided, twenty-five miles south of Providence and about fifteen 
miles from Somerset, the loudest thunder which I ever experien- 
ced. It made the house in which I was tremble sensibly. 
I have received from an estimable friend, Mr. Allen, a most in- 
teresting account of this tornado, which passed over the river, 
and there produced the appearance of a water-spout,.while he 
was sufficiently near for accurate observation. In one respect his 
narrative tends to justify my opinion, that the exciting cause of 
tornadoes is electrical attraction. In two. instances in which 
flashes of lightning proceeded from the water, Mr. Allen remarked 
that the effervescence produced by the tornado in the water very 
perceptibly subsided.* 
Extract from a Letter written by Zachariah Allen, Esq., 
Providence. 
“It was about three o’clock, P. M., during a violent showel; 
that I observed a peculiarly black loud to form in the midst of 
light, fleecy clouds, and to assume a portentous appearance in the 
+. » heavens, having along, dark, tapering cone of vapor extending - 
it to the surface of the earth. The form of this black cloud, — 
es re a 
ane 1 of the cone of vapor depending from it, so nearly resembled 
eS 
a3 oe  * See Essay on the Cause of Tornadoes or Water-spouts in sixth vol. America 
“4 Philosophical Transactions, or in Silliman’s Journal, vol. 32, for 1837. 
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