LL 
i 
a 
Notices of Tornadoes, &c. J 77 
“T also particularly observed that there was no perceptible in- 
crease of temperature of the air adjacent to the edge of the whirl- 
wind, which might have caused an ascending current by a rare- 
fiction of a portion of the atmosphere. After passing over the 
sheet of water, and gaining the shore, I observed the shingles 
and fragments of a barn to be elevated and dispersed high in the 
air; and the dark cloud continued to maintan the same appear- 
ance which it at first presented, until it passed away beyond the - 
Scope of a distinct vision of its misty outlines. 
“The above imperfect sketch can convey to your mind only a 
feeble impression of this exciting scene, which in passing before 
me excited just enough of terror to impart to the spectacle the 
most awful sense of the power, sublimity and grandeur of the 
Almighty, as described in the glowing words of the Psalmist. 
‘He bowed the heavens also, and came down; and darkness was 
under his feet; and he did fly upon the wings of the wind. He 
made darkness his secret place; his pavilion round about him 
were dark waters and thick clouds of the skies.’ ” 
Il. At Chatenay, near Paris. 
‘To the Eaitors of the National Gazette. 
Messrs. Editors—You had published a memoir on “tornadoes 
by a distinguished foreigner, irsted. Conceiving the impression 
conveyed by that article less worthy of consideration than those 
which had been presented in a memoir which I had previously 
published, I hope that I shall be considered as having had a sufii- 
cient incentive for endeavoring through the same channel to cor- 
tect the erroneous impressions which that memoir was in my 
opinion of a nature to produce. 
In my letter to you of the 26th ult. it was stated that I con- 
sidered tornadoes as the consequence of an electrical discharge 
superseding the more ordinary medium of lightning. From an 
_ article which has since met my attention in the Journal des Debats, 
published on the 17thof July at Paris, it appears that a tremen- 
dous tornado occurred about the last of the preceding June in the 
Vicinity of that metropolis. The losers applied for indemnity to 
certain insurers, who objected to pay on the plea that the policies 
Were against thunder storms not against tornadoes. This led to | 
‘an application to the celebrated Arago, who referred the case to 
another savant, Peltier. 
