402 Miscellanies. 
“ His hypothesis was I conceive, unsatisfactory, because it did not 
assign any cause for the concentration of the wind, or for the hiatus 
presumed to be the cause. This deficiency is supplied, if my sugges- 
tions be correct.” 
On reading this passage, after previously hearing or reading the al- 
legation above quoted, that Dr, Hare’s hypothesis was defective in not 
appealing to a gyratory movement, it was presumed that it would be 
perfectly evident to every one, that, from ignorance of English, or 
inattention, Mr. Peltier’s statement was the reverse of the reality. 
In proof of a gyratory force having been exercised during the New 
Brunswick tornado, Dr. Hare referred to his having, in his Memoir, 
cited the case of a chimney, of which the upper portion had been so 
twisted upon the lower portion, as to have its corners projecting over 
the sides of the latter; but he had now taken a different view of that 
fact, which had since struck him as being of much higher importance 
than he had formerly considered it. 
Duringan examination of the track of the tornado which lately rav- 
aged the suburbs of New Haven, Conn., Dr. Hare had been led to in- 
fer that the electrical discharge is concentrated upon particular bodies, 
according to their character, or the conducting nature of the soil; so 
that the vertical force arising from electrical reaction, and the elasti- 
city of the air, acts upon them with peculiar force. Hence, while some 
trees were borne aloft, others, which were situated very near them on 
either side, remained rooted in the soil. In two instances at New Ha- 
ven, wagons were especially the victims of the electro-aérial conflict. 
In the case of one of these, the axletree was broken, and while one 
wheel was carried into an adjoining field, the other was driven with 
so much force against the weather-boarding of a barn, as to leave both 
a mark of the projecting hub, and of the greater portion of the periph- 
ery. The plates of the elliptical springs were separated from each 
other. During the tornado at New Brunswick, the injury done to some 
wagons in the shop of a coach-maker, appeared at the time inexplica- 
ble. It was now inferred, that the four iron wheel-tires, caused by 
their immense conducting power, a confluence of the electric fiuid, 
producing a transient explosive rarefaction, and a subsequent afflux of 
air with a local gyration of extreme violence. 
It may be reasonably surmised, that the excessive injury done to 
trees results, not from the general whirl, but from a local gyration to 
which they are subjected, in consequence of the multiplicity of points 
which their twigs and leaves furnish for the emission of the electrical 
“The fact that the leaves of trees thus injured, appear after- 
wards as if they had been partially scorched, seems ; to countenance 
this idea. The twisting of the chimney at New Brunswick, as above 
